She jolted upright in bed, and it took more than a few precious seconds to orient herself.
This wasn’t Amelia’s ship. For one, Fransis wasn’t snoring. (Torian wouldn’t miss waking up tothat.) Her bunk definitely wasn’t this comfortable. And even on full-bright, the lights felt like what she imagined warm sunshine was like—comfortable and encouraging, not artificial and abrasive.
“Awaken faster,” a voice overhead said.
Moss.
In that groggy span between asleep and awake, Torian had thought it was all a dream. That she hallucinated (vividly, apparently) purchasing an odd alien ship and befriending its unique inhabitant.
But as she blinked past bleary eyes, the ship came into focus. The sleeping pod, cozy and quiet. The living space beyond the pod’s open door. The glimmering of distant stars beyond the windows.
Stars.
Wait. They were through the wormhole already?
“Ah, shit,” Torian exclaimed, catapulting out of bed. “We’re already here?”
“If ‘already here’ is defined as ‘slid into a random pocket of space due to catastrophic engine failure,’ then yes. We are already here.” It wasn’t spoken with a sarcastic tone, but it probably should have been.
Torian paused in clawing her shoulder-length hair into some semblance of order. It was usually pretty flat, but the humidity wasn’t doing it favors. “What?Catastrophicengine failure?”
This had to be a joke.
… Actually, the joke was that Torian hadn’t considered this as a possibility before. She’d been so excited to leave Colony 13 that she ignored basic safety procedures, such ashiring a Heavens-damned mechanicto inspect her new purchase.
Granted, she’d spent her remaining money onfood, so anything else would have been tough to manage.
(She still hated that Amelia had been right.)
Moss dimmed the lights now that she was awake. The stark adjustment meant Torian nearly tripped as she staggered down the stairs to the cargo bay, where her duffel bag had been discarded. She caught herself on the metal banister, glared at the ceiling.
“Humans need alittlelight to see,” she said pointedly.
The lights eased on. “The flight deck is in the opposite direction.” Moss sounded annoyed.
Torian huffed. “I know, but I’m not dressed.” She’d removed her dirty clothes from yesterday and slept in a tank top and underwear. Hardly “catastrophic engine failure” attire. Since they hadn’t exploded in space, she figured she had a minute.
“The ship is a comfortable temperature for human standards.”
Torian pawed through her duffel, swapping her musty shirt for something cleaner. “I still need clothes, Moss.” While she tugged on a fresh pair of pants and her boots, she demanded, “What happened to the engine? Can I fix it?”
“Unless you are also a mechanic human, it is doubtful.” Moss illuminated a light at the top of the stairs, clearly leading her to the flight deck. “I am the onlyintelligentsystem on this ship. The engine has basic functionality, however, and was able to reroute power to our secondary propulsion unit.”
“Wait. There’s a backup propulsion system?” Humans had backup systems, too, but most of them involved lifeboats orshutting down unnecessary systems until their SOS beacon flagged someone down.
Her heart was still racing, but that sounded a bit more optimistic than “catastrophic engine failure.”
She jogged to the flight deck. The whole trip took only a few seconds, which was convenient for an emergency. In that moment, Torian was grateful she couldn’t afford anything bigger than this ship.
Overhead, Moss was still talking. “Yes. Every nylarian ship was required to have a secondary propulsion system. It has similar capabilities to the primary propulsion system, albeit with a shorter lifespan. Itwouldbe sufficient to get us to Rhymarra.”
“So, what’s the problem?” Torian slid into the pilot’s seat, facing the control panel. It was awash in red indicators, and she started poking around for more information.
She realized the issue the moment Moss voiced it.
“Auto-Navigation isalsoa very, very stupid system. It’s rerouted us from our intended destination to an established maintenance base.”
Torian enlarged the holographic map of the humans’ solar system. Moss’s version had been updated with Rhymarra and humanity’s eighteen space stations. But the ship wasn’t angling toward any of those.
