A pulse ran through the ship. A loud cracking sound rang out. Jenny loosed a small scream and Marik grabbed her and held on, his face wan and his features gone deathly still. Jessica’s hands went to her weapons, something that was a little funny since the enemy was space itself.
Talon shouted, “I need help!”
He did. The ship was plummeting downward, falling so fast that Drake’s feet left the deck and his head hit the top of the ceiling. Pain shot through his skull. Margie and Jeval were holding onto the bolted down chairs and Marik and Jenny had been thrown a few feet away. Jenny was crying, and Marik was trying to reach her. Just as Drake was sure the pressure was going to snap his neck, the gravity changed, and he was slammed back to the floor so hard he heard his spine creak.
Blade groaned from somewhere nearby and stood. Talon cried out again. The ship buckled and shifted back and forth as they all staggered toward the control panels and the co-captain’s consoles.
Margie was on the floor, curled up now and not speaking. Jeval hovered over her, his hands resting on her skull and face. Blade moved as fast as he could given that he had a wound in his cheek now; a slice of skin was missing, and Jenny went to him and tilted his head to one side before calling for medication and bandages.
The darkness was complete. It was lightlessness that Drake stared at, awed and terrified at once. That darkness was so…so empty and so pervasive. There was nothing, not even a faint glimmer. He’d seen deep space and its darkness before. This was not that. This was a blackness that was so complete, not even the powerful beams of the ships guiding systems could cut through it or lighten it.
Talon spoke in a strained voice. “I can barely see my controls! I know we need to go to the east, but goddammit, where is east? The controls are spinning so much that I can’t tell.”
Blade said, “No idea. The whole world feels upside down and backward.”
Margie said, “Maybe it is. Go with your gut, Talon.”
Talon said, “Great. Thanks. I’ll do that.”
The sarcasm made Drake chuckle despite the grimness of the situation. The ship buckled and tore through the atmosphere. The space unfolded all around them, threatening to suck them in and lose them in its grip. It was too late to go back now.
They’d passed the point of no return.
Light burst into being. Someone screamed. The hull of the ship let out a long scream and Drake was sure that Margie had gotten it wrong somehow, or she had been used by the Oracle that she carried within her womb to take them all to their destruction.
Then it appeared: a crumbling and monstrous thing made of some material that resembled brick and gable but wasn’t. Tralam was there, in all its ruined glory, and the ship sailed right into its maw.
