Then Tessa starts laughing. For a second, it catches. That hysterical edge that jumps body to body. We laugh. Not because it’s funny. Because we’renotdead.
Then silence again.
We all turn.
Outside the port, New Terra burns. Clouds of shrapnel swirl. Lightning forks through the upper atmosphere. There’s no time to mourn it, because the stars are strobing now.
White, then blue, white again, and then everything tilts.
“Gravity assist in three,” the shuttle AI says, so calm it makes me want to punch the speaker. At least it’s back on. “Brace.”
Then the deck lurches.
My ears pop. The hull lets out a long, metallic groan. Somewhere behind us, a bolt snaps like a gunshot.
The ship rotates. The viewport spins. New Terra slides into frame as we slingshot away.
And—wow. They upgraded this ship for speed, if nothing else.
I press my hand to the nearest console and whisper, “Just hold together. Just a little longer.”
We just need enough time find a place to land. Wherever that is.
And not run out of oxygen. Or food. Or sanity.
“Status?” I rasp.
The ship’s AI doesn’t respond. Then text runs across the screen by Sloane.
“Sloane, what’s it saying?” I ask.
Sloane reads it out loud, voice trembling. "Life support: marginal. Shields: eight percent. Hull integrity: sixty-two percent.”
It’s a mess. “Hey,” I say. “Not bad for a ship that could’ve exploded at launch.”
I settle in for several hours of fast flight while the ship evacs us to a better warp point. We need to get away from this sector. Anything habitable nearby is already settled with the typical galaxy-hodgepodge of people, humans so genetically modified that they look alien.
We get three full minutes of silence.
Three.
And then the universe tries to kill us again.
There’s a short warning chirp. Then the whole world flips.
The shuttle rolls hard to starboard, screaming from the inertia. For a split second, I’m weightless—my stomach does a full revolution—and then gravity finds us again. Someone yells. Someone gags. My shoulder slams into a bulkhead.
“Brace, brace, brace,” the AI says, in the same tone it probably used to announce beverage service fifty years ago.
The deck lurches again. A sharp crack splits the air. Dana’s voice cuts through, furious and loud. “I hate this flying coffin!”
Static bursts from the ceiling speakers, and the smell of burning hits fast. The nav screen spits out useless lines of glitching code.
Piper shouts, “We lost attitude control?”
“Starboard engines are fried,” I yell back, punching the stabilizer until my knuckles sting. The console gives a low, miserable moan every time I touch it. “We’re in a flat spin.”
Outside the forward port, stars smear into spirals.
