And I thought I could handle this?

  “Alter, you have the stick,” I said, my entire body turning cold. I had made a mistake. A stupid, horrible, selfish mistake. Matt hard warned me earlier about catching people I cared about up in my unstable emotions, and then I had gone ahead and done exactly that. He tried to warn me again, and I still hadn’t listened.

  And now?

  I just wanted to go home.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Unfortunately, there was no going home. At least not yet.

  Right now, the only thing I could do was let the cold grip of gut-wracking, selfish guilt embrace me as I held on for dear life, worried about Matt unconscious on the sofa behind me. Right now, there was nothing I could do for him, except help Alter fight our way out of this mess.

  She didn’t flinch, or show any sign of nervousness as she took control of the ship. She immediately changed course, taking a more direct path toward the corvette on the starboard flank. I realized why almost immediately, ashamed my nerves had canceled out years of playing strategy video games. By moving directly toward one ship, it limited the other’s ability to shoot at us without the risk of hitting a friendly.

  At the same time, the maneuver still put us closer to one of the corvettes and its guns. Maybe the disruptor rounds were slow, but every kilometer closer we came to the vessel gave Alter less time to react and evade.

  “Ben, take the rear guns,” she said calmly, raising her hand from the throttle to pass control of the cannons to me. A box appeared in my HUD to acknowledge the transfer, and I reached up to tap it. Immediately, the forward view was replaced by the rear despite the direction of my head. I quickly scanned for signs of the CDF fighters, only able to see them because the system outlined them against the backdrop of Caprum.

  Seeing any planet from outer space live was cause for distraction. It momentarily pulled me back into the wonderment of what was happening and away from Matt’s distress. Looking at the blue marble, I immediately noticed how the position of the continents was off, the sky had a slightly deeper blue, and there was a lot more reflective silver and gray amongst the green and brown landscape, indicating a highly developed world.

  My gaze shifted to huge tracts of dark patches along that landscape, massive scars as if a giant dragon had once held the entire planet tightly in its claws and dropped it into place. I opened my mouth to ask Alter what had caused the marks before remembering we were running for our lives and I was supposed to be watching our six.

  Nothing there. The two remaining fighters had fallen way behind our boosted ascent and had seemed to be continuing the chase out of obligation rather than with any intent to catch up. So why had Alter asked me to take the rear guns?

  “Hold on,” she said. “The corvettes are starting to fire.”

  Every part of me wanted to switch back to the forward view. To see what we were about to fly into. I struggled to resist the temptation, certain she had passed me the cannons for a reason. As we began juking and jerking through space, my body was pushed and pulled in every direction despite the ship’s countermeasures. The fear that this adventure would end only minutes after it started expanded in my mind, sending shockwaves of alarm throughout my body. My hand quivered on the stick. My heart pounded so hard I could barely breathe.

  In the corner of the HUD, the view of our defenses remained fixed, the shield nodes all intact. Even the ones that had turned yellow had shifted back to green.

  The seconds passed, the ship shuddering from the constant change in direction. Maintaining control of the rear cannons, I continued to resist the urge to return to the forward view to see what was happening in front of us, even though I knew Alter had things there well in hand. This was her home. Keep knew she would do everything she could to keep it from being destroyed. How could I not trust that?

  “It’ll be harder to dodge their disruptor fire once we’re on the other side of the blockade,” Alter said. “And we can’t activate the hyperdrive until we’re clear of orbit. You need to track and shoot any of the rounds that look like they’re going to hit us.”

  “Maybe you should take the rear guns once we’re past?” I replied, my voice shaky. I hated that my nerves were so obvious, but she didn’t seem to either notice or care.

  “No. You can do it, Ben.”

  She said it like she really believed it, even though at that moment I didn’t. Instead of arguing, I refocused on the view behind us, tensing slightly when the corvette appeared at the bottom of my field of vision. It passed so close below us it felt like I could reach out and touch it.

  The ship was at least ten times the size of ours, the gun batteries narrower and more plentiful. The cannons across the top rotated to track us as we passed, the speed of their motors unable to match our velocity once we made it directly overhead. It didn’t stop the corvette from shooting at us, but it did reduce the intensity of the lethal bombardment that came our way, at least until we shot across the corvette’s bow.

  Their port cannons were already in position, and they opened fire the moment we reached the other side of the small blockade, sending dark projectiles at us like shotgun shells. The fire control system painted dozens of incoming rounds sprayed across space.

  I wasn’t sure which ones were a threat, so I did my best to catch them all, benefitting from the added time our growing distance and matching directional velocity afforded us. I tried to track individual targets with my eyes to line up the cannons, quickly discovering that method was too slow. Only Alter’s flying saved us from the first volley, her maneuvers carrying us through the spread.

  A more severe warning tone shrilled in my ears, sending my gaze to the ship’s wireframe. The area just below the main thrusters flashed red, the shields reporting as offline, hit by one of the rounds.

  “Shit!” Alter snapped. “Ben, I need your help.”

  “On it,” I replied, redoubling my focus. I didn’t try to hunt the rounds again. Instead, I tested using the stick to move the cannons, pleased to see that the second method of targeting was available. Alter should have mentioned it earlier.

  Control through the stick improved my performance immediately. Instead of trying to track individual projectiles, I fired bursts of energy blobs at incoming clusters, spraying the field behind us in a controlled manner. The fiery blobs swept through the disruptor rounds, burning them away one after another, only a few making it through to zip harmlessly past. I could sense the victorious smirk working its way across my face, my confidence growing as I blasted the disruptor rounds with shot after shot.

  “Almost there,” Alter said.

  I didn’t relent, spraying a blanket of cover fire behind us that absorbed every round coming our way. With the opposing forces finally dropping back, Alter eased up on her evasive maneuvers, the change so smooth it could barely be felt.

  “Cease fire,” she said. “Hyperspace in five. Four. Three.”

  I took my finger off the trigger, new excitement building at the thought of traveling faster than light. It was too bad Matt wasn’t awake to experience it firsthand.

  Alter’s countdown reached one almost at the same moment that one of the disruptor rounds moved into the rear view from out of nowhere. Instinct took over, and I wrapped my finger around the trigger, eyes lining up a shot, the turrets swiveling to adjust.

  Spacetime bent around us, Caprum distorting as though it were in a fisheye lens before being pinched, suddenly shrinking away into nothing as though it had never been there at all. For the briefest moment, I thought the disruptor round would vanish with it.

  But it didn’t. Caught in the bubble or field or magic or whatever that Alter called hyperspace, it stayed with the ship, its trajectory carrying it toward the hole in our shields.

  “Alter, one of the rounds made it through. We’re about to—”

  I didn’t get to finish before the projectile hit the hull, sending a shockwave of energy rippling across the exterior. All of the shield nodes on the wireframe switched to red just before the entire HUD vanished, as did the rearview. I found myself looking at the front of the flight deck through the tinted visor. The pilot station had gone offline, and as I turned my head to look at Alter the rest of the flight deck went dead too, leaving us in total darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Shit,” Alter cursed sharply, her voice my only way of judging her position. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. How did you miss that one?” Her voice stabbed me like a knife, accusing me of failure.

  “I didn’t see it,” I replied. “It came out of nowhere. I’m sorry.”

  A single light flashed on the flight deck, coming from the subprocessor in the back. It was enough for me to make out Alter’s angry face as she ripped off her helmet and released her harness, pushing herself out of the co-pilot’s seat.

  I hadn’t realized the gravity had been lost with the power until she floated free of her station, using it as an anchor to push herself toward the exit. She twisted neatly when she passed Matt, avoiding globs of vomit as they coagulated and floated away from him.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  Reaching the exit, she tapped on her boots before putting her feet back on the deck. The soles must be magnetized, because she stuck to the deck as if the gravity had returned.

  “The disruptor took out the main systems,” she replied. “The emergency backup is online, but I need to go to Deck Seven to manually reboot the primary controller.” Pulling open a panel beside the hatch, she used a hidden hand crank to roll the door open just enough to slip out. She paused between the two doors, looking back at me. “It’s not your fault, Ben. You did your best. The good news is that we got away from Caprum in one piece.”

  “What’s the bad news?” I asked.

  “Getting hit while in hyperspace is less than ideal. Losing power shut down the hyperdrive, dropping us well short of our original destination. If I had to guess, we’re probably about halfway between Caprum and Sarton, Duke Sedaya’s homeworld. I’ll be right back.”

  “Wait,” I said, reaching for my helmet. “I want to learn how to reboot the primary.” I picked the helmet off and let it float away. The wire connecting it to the pilot’s station anchored it when it reached its apex, holding it in place. I removed my harness, almost giddy when I pushed off and began to float.

  “This isn’t a good time,” Alter answered. “I can teach you everything when we reach a safer location. Just wait here.” She vanished through the hatch, leaving it hanging open.

  I pushed off the pilot’s station, trying to copy her weightless maneuver. Instead, I found myself headed toward the ceiling, my body turning as I flailed, not accustomed to the different physics. The effort rolled me over, and I hit the ceiling with my back, sticking there like Spiderman.

  “Ben?” Matt said, eyes opening slowly, looking up at me from the sofa. “I had the weirdest dream.” He paused, staring at me. “Why are you stuck to the ceiling?”

  “I’m not stuck,” I replied, pushing myself back toward the deck. “There’s no gravity right now. Are you okay?”

  “Wait. No gravity?” He looked around before groaning. “Damn it. That wasn’t a dream, was it? We really did buy a starship.”

  “We really did. Are you okay?” I repeated.

  “I’m not sure now.” He looked down at his shirt, where the vomit had left a stain. “I barfed on myself.”

  I touched down on the deck in front of him, grabbing the pilot’s seat to hold myself in place. “I’m afraid so. Look, your puke is floating around the flight deck.” I pointed to one of the blobs drifting across the deck.

  “Gross,” Matt replied. “We aren’t dead. That’s good. What happened?”

  “We made it to hyperspace, but one of the Caprum Defense Force’s shots hit us and knocked out the power. We’re on backup right now. Alter went to reboot the primary processor, which should bring us back online and fix the gravity.”

  He stared at me, face still pale. “This isn’t what I signed up for.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”

  “Because you care about me.”

  “Not anymore.”

  I paused, the guilt still gnawing at me. “I shouldn’t have let you do this. I put your life in danger, and it’s not right. I’m a selfish asshole.”

  He shrugged. “What’s done is done. We can’t change it, so there’s no use crying about it.”

  I forced a smile. “I’m still an asshole.”

  “Yup,” he agreed. “So, just to recap. We’re dead in space, flat broke, and both Caprum and Duke Sedaya have bounties out on this ship.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “That’s a problem. What’s the solution?”

  It was just like Matt to put the past where it belonged and focus on the way forward. “I haven’t had any time to think about it.”

  “Me neither, but I know what my gut is telling me. We can either let someone else take this ship from us, or we can beat them to the punch and put ourselves in a better position.”

  “You’re talking about contacting Sedaya again. We’ve already had that discussion.”

  “You got to have your joyride to space,” Matt snapped angrily. “Look around. We barely made it out of there alive, and now we have not one, but two separate prices on our heads and we’ve only been here for three hours. You felt guilty about that two seconds ago.”

  I froze in place, biting my lower lip. He was right. I had worried about him until I knew he was okay before switching back to selfish mode. “What about Alter?”

  “We can’t make every decision about how it affects her. We didn’t take her on willingly, she was part of the package.”

  “She saved our lives, or at least a trip to the gulag. She’s the only reason we made it out of there.”

  “And I’m fine if she wants to come with us. That’s her choice.” I opened my mouth to argue, but he didn’t let me speak. “Come on, Ben. Sedaya wants the Star. He also runs Caprum. We can turn it over, get a new ship plus some spending money and have him cancel all of our debts and issue a pardon or whatever he needs to do to leave us free and clear. We can rocket around the Fertile Quadrant looking for a cure, and once we find one we can fix you up and go home. Or we can be penniless fugitives until some mercenary or bounty hunter catches up to us. Which one of those sounds better to you?”

  I stared at him in silence. Of course, there was only one good answer. But I hated that answer even more now than I had the first time he brought it up. That was the biggest difference between Matt and me. My mother had taught me to dare to dream. His father had taught him to survive.

  I looked past him, through the hatch to the corridor leading away from the flight deck where emergency lights offered a dim view. No sign of Alter.

  “Okay,” I said, the word sour in my mouth. “Call him.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Matt’s hands shook slightly as he navigated to the phone’s hypercom screen, which immediately displayed a search function on top and what probably should have been a long list of saved identifiers below. Instead, it appeared that Keep had wiped the hypercom datastore clean, leaving only the single ID that he had collected prior to his departure from the ship.

  Duke Sedaya’s ID.

  “You’re sure about this?” I asked as Matt’s thumb shifted to tap the entry.

  “If you have a better idea, I’m open to it,” he replied.

  We both knew I didn’t. I used the lack of gravity to jump over Matt and the sofa, pushing off the ceiling and twisting in the air to come down behind him, unable to hold back my smile when I stuck the landing. My initial confusion over the weightlessness had faded fast. It was all a matter of physics, anyway.

  “Show off,” he said, pressing down on the entry. “How long do you think it will take to—”

  He stopped talking when a man’s face appeared on the phone’s screen, causing us both to flinch. The connection wasn’t great, the image grainy and indistinct, but it only added to the creepiness of the visage looking back at us. Frankly, Sedaya looked like a frostbitten elf. His face was pale, long, and narrow, with a tiny nose, high cheekbones, deep set purple eyes and too-blue lips. His long white hair and pointed ears only solidified that view. But hadn’t Keep said he was human?

  He looked back at us curiously, an expression of rage crossing over his expression.

  “You’re not Avelus,” he said, his voice too soft and high to match his otherwise evil and unfriendly look. The tension in his jaw relaxed as he seemed to realize the state of things. “Ah. You’re the buyers.”

  He said the word buyers like a cobra spitting venom. Maybe because Keep had managed to sell only minutes before his lackeys arrived on the scene? The timing was good for us, bad for him. At least, I thought it had been good for us. If only I had known we were about to be fleeced.

  Matt and I just kept staring at him. Our nerves and surprise prevented us from speaking.

  “You’re Earthians, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Y…yes,” I stammered out, fighting to regain control of my anxiety.

  “We got your hypercom ID from one of your people,” Matt said bluntly, kicking his shock to the curb. “He told us you were interested in negotiating for the Star of Caprum, and suggested we could make a deal.”

  “I see.”

  That was all he said, silently staring at us as the seconds ticked away. I glanced over my shoulder, making sure Alter hadn’t come back yet.

  “Are you interested?” Matt asked.

  “You just made the purchase,” Sedaya replied. “Why do you want to sell so quickly? Greed?”

  “What?”

  “I just checked the hypernet. It appears a bounty has been placed against your registered identifier. You left Caprum without settling your debt to the storage facility.”