Drake said, “I can captain the ship into the inner ring.”
Talon said, “It’s not just that I doubt your skill. It’s that I prefer mine.”
Drake advised himself toward caution. Talon truly was the best in the universe, but this was a place that required more than skill. It required knowledge of it. The first time that Drake had entered it, he had entered it with a map and a code, and all of that had proven to be wrong. He had barely survived. But he had marked well that passage. Many of the crew that had been on board with him that day had died. He had nearly died himself. Of all of those who had survived the initial horrors of that wormhole, he alone still lived.
Talon’s eyes scanned across his face. Drake kept his expression open and relaxed. Talon nodded. “Then I shall fly beside you.”
Drake said, “I would appreciate that.”
They headed back toward the other side of the bridge, toward the actual flight deck. Talon stepped into his usual place and Drake stepped in beside him, settling into the co-captain spot with real ease. Even that rankled. He should not be so comfortable being second-in-command. But he was. His early life and predisposed him to that, and that too irritated Drake.
They had breached the inner ring of the planet’s atmosphere now. The fire belched consistently from the surface, igniting the gaseous ring. Solar flares struck the planet, chipping away more and more of it with each strike.
They passed that planet and found themselves facing seven more. The planets ranged in size from what had once been the large first planet to the tiniest planet at the back end of the galaxy. The system had always reminded him of the galaxy that Old Earth had once sat in. Not that Old Earth still existed. It had been bombed into nothingness and not so long ago.
The memory of all of the people that he loved there on the planet he had spent so much time on made his shoulders tightened. He knew that the Federation was capricious and that at any moment they could do the same thing to his home planet: Newport.
The igniting atmosphere was not the least of their worries. They had barely passed the fire with the next stage began. Ice. So much of it that if they did not fly fast and true, the ship would be mired down and become frozen. Everything within it would also freeze solid, including them. Drake’s hands were steady on the control, but his thoughts were chaotic.
What lay behind that door?
