“So why do it?” I asked. “If you aren’t making any money, I mean?”

  “Besides seeing the looks on people’s faces when we give them a tour of outer space?” He paused. “I can’t think of another reason, actually. Matt?”

  “Some things are more rewarding than money,” he added. “We don’t take just anyone. A friend of ours wrote an algorithm that aggregates different data points from thousands of sources, cross-references them with other variables, and spits out a list of potential customers. The only thing they all have in common is that they’re either terminally ill or have suffered a recent tragedy.”

  “Wow,” Alyssa said. “You’re doing all of this as charity?”

  “If I didn’t co-own Head Case, I would probably be on that list,” Ben said. “It’s my way of giving back.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “It’s really nothing. It seems amazing to people here, but where Head Case comes from, it’s all just part of normal life.”

  “How come no one else from that part of the galaxy has come to Earth then?” I asked. “If they have the ships to do it.”

  “It’s pretty far away. And Head Case is a little more special than that.”

  “He means he’s a little more special than that,” Matt corrected.

  “How—“

  “We can talk about that later,” Ben interrupted. “Matt will walk you through activating the hyperdrive.”

  “You just said one of my favorite words,” I gushed.

  “Matt?” he joked.

  “Hyperdrive,” I replied. “It still blows my mind that it’s real.”

  “Mine, too,” Tyler agreed.

  “Since the coordinates are already set,” Matt said, “we just need to pass them to the Primary Control System for processing, which I’m doing right now.” He air-tapped a couple of times. A red diode activated on my control surface, next to a closed toggle switch above the throttle. “When that light turns green, we’re ready to go. Open the guard, flip the toggle, and off we go. Easy-peasy.”

  “And I get to flip the switch?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I can do it if you’d rather not.”

  “No, no, no. I’ve got it.” I grinned, my eyes split between the view outside and the red diode. “How long does it take?”

  “A couple of minutes. We don’t want to crash into anything at 10 c.”

  “Did you just say ten c?” Tyler cried. “As in, ten times the speed of light?”

  “We could go faster, but Mars is pretty close.“

  Tyler cracked up. “You could get to the Proxima system in less than half an hour! Why don’t we go there?”

  “Most people don’t know the Milky Way outside of the planets around the Sun,” Ben said. “So we stick to what’s familiar.”

  “I’m guessing most of your passengers aren’t like us. Noah and I at least are total sci-fi nerds. Noah most of all.”

  “I like sci-fi,” Alyssa added.

  Ben’s grin proved he thought the whole thing amusing. “Let’s just get to Mars first, take a few minutes to sign the agreement, and then we can discuss changes to the itinerary, okay?”

  “Deal,” I said, still eying the diode. “So Mars will take what, like thirty seconds?”

  “Give or take,” Matt agreed. “Almost—“ His voice was drowned out by a shrill beep from the console between us. A projection like the one in my Star Squadron pod appeared in front of my surround, creating a grid of space around Head Case.

  A red shape had just entered that grid, closing on us at lightning speed.

  “What the…?” Matt’s eyes suddenly widened. ”Brace for impact!”

  CHAPTER 13

  My knuckles blanched bone-white against the controls. I’m sure my face paled as well. My muscles seized so fiercely that my whole body vibrated. I stopped breathing, staring at the red icon hurtling toward us.

  "Evasive action!" Ben barked. "Shields up!"

  Matt scrambled to comply while throwing Head Case into a wild corkscrew. My heart pounded, trying to beat its way out of my chest. Eyes locked unblinking on the grid, the g-forces of the evasive maneuver overcame the dampeners, leaving me plastered sideways to my seat. It was all for nothing. The projectile reached the center of the grid, blending with the circle that represented Head Case.

  The hit rattled the entire ship, sending it whirling out of control while sparks rained down from overhead conduits, followed by intense smoke filling the flight deck. I could hardly believe we had survived the strike. Suddenly more sick to my stomach than excited, I looked over to Matt to find he had barely reacted to the chaos and commotion. His attention remained focused on his flying, as if being smacked with a missile was another day at the office for him.

  Maybe it was.

  He expertly regained control of the flailing starship, keeping us headed away from Earth.

  “Meg, damage report!” Ben said, presumably over the ship’s comms since she wasn’t on the flight deck.

  “The shields absorbed some of the hit, but we lost thruster three and the hyperdrive is offline.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Ben answered, suggesting the loss of the hyperdrive was simply bad luck.

  “I wish I were.”

  I was about to say something along the lines of, at least we’re alive, and we’re safe now. when I noticed a second, larger icon enter the grid, along with two more of the smaller projectiles fired from it. Apparently, whoever was chasing us hadn’t expected us to survive the first blow.

  They were still after us.

  Matt kept Head Case moving in a random pattern, pushing the thrust to max and juking and jiving to ruin our attacker’s aim. With one of the thrusters down, the bogey easily matched our maneuvers, continuing to close the distance between us at an alarming rate.

  The two missiles closed even faster.

  “Noah, take the stick,” Matt said. “I’m on the guns.”

  He switched control to me before I could argue, leaving me to continue his maneuvers as his surround changed, offering a rear view and a reticle. I could feel the ear turrets swiveling to face rearward, a smooth vibration followed by a pulsing shudder as they opened fire. Matt hit one of the missiles within a few seconds.

  The other snuck past the defensive barrage. I yanked the stick hard right, twisting it at the same time while reducing thrust. Head Case jerked and shifted, almost avoiding the missile.

  Almost.

  The ship shook again, the second hit more glancing than the first, leaving the shields still fully powered and ready to avoid the next attack. Kinetic force spun us off-course, but years of playing similar games allowed my muscle memory to work out the physics, bringing us back in line. Not as fast as Matt had done it, but not bad for my first time.

  Not that it mattered. The bogey remained on our six, still gaining. It was obvious to me we couldn’t outrun it. I’m sure Ben and Matt knew that, too.

  I threw us into another spiraling evasive, the unchecked inertia dragging at my body as I pushed the ship beyond its dampening ability. I groaned, simultaneously thrilled and terrified, alive with adrenaline.

  “Levi, any luck identifying that bastard?" Matt demanded through gritted teeth.

  "Negative," Levi reported. Her smooth, almost-human vocals conveyed the same tension I felt. “The craft doesn’t match anything in our data store.”

  "Of course not!" Matt snarled, our tail taking evasive action as the ear cannons continued spewing fury. “Come on! Sit still, you son of a bitch.”

  The target on the grid suddenly flashed yellow, possibly an indicator that the guns had finally hit their mark. It tried to escape the barrage, but like my bout with Jedi, Matt had figured out the craft’s pattern, taking advantage of it until it changed. A trio of projectiles escaped the attack, launching toward us from the bogey.

  “Noah!” Matt shouted as if there was anything more I could do. I was flying with every ounce of energy I had left, but it was almost all gone. It had been a long day, emotionally and physically draining.

  And this was the poisoned cherry on top.

  Matt hit one of the missiles with the guns. I managed to avoid the next one, giving Matt the opportunity to swing the guns around and hit it as it streaked past us. It detonated right in front of us, the debris momentarily lighting up the bow shields like the Fourth of July.

  With two projectiles down, I couldn’t avoid the third one.

  Alarms blared an instant before the deck bucked wildly, yanking me hard against my restraints. Behind me, pained cries hinted that Tyler and Alyssa hadn’t fared any better.

  “Aft shields are at thirty percent,” Meg reported. “We can’t take much more of this.”

  "Whatever this bastard’s flying, he's got shields to match," Matt grunted. “The guns should've at least taken a bite out of him by now.” He risked a glance back at Ben. “We need to get out of here.”

  I let my gaze follow Matt’s, glancing at Ben just long enough to see the hesitancy in his tight expression. It was obvious that whatever escape option Matt had suggested, it wasn’t one Ben wanted to take.

  I didn’t have time to wait for him to make a decision. I threw Head Case into a sharp dive, initiating an extended burn on a new vector away from the pursuing UFO. I tasted blood as I gritted my teeth, vaguely realizing I must’ve bitten my tongue during the last bone-shaking hit.

  Three more missiles streaked toward us. I briefly glanced at Matt, his expression hardened with furious intensity as he blasted away at the missiles, picking off two while I managed to evade the last one.

  “Noah,” Ben said, his voice strangely calm. “I need you to keep us straight and level.”

  “What?” Not sure I’d heard him correctly, I wanted to look his way, but I didn’t dare tear my eyes from the surround. I still didn’t know that much about Head Case’s capabilities, but we had already taken a spanking, and I was terrified by the idea of giving the bogey a clean shot to take us out.

  “Straight and level,” he repeated as if in a zen trance. “You’ll see a dark line appear ahead of us. It’ll get wider pretty fast. You need to fly us down it.”

  They were the strangest instructions anyone had ever given me. This time, I couldn’t avoid looking back at Ben to confirm them. I thought I had seen everything when Head Case appeared from out of nowhere in the cornfield.

  Apparently, I hadn’t seen anything yet.

  Ben stood in front of his station, hands raised as if he was about to catch a basketball. That was weird enough, given the circumstances.

  Even weirder, he was glowing.

  “What the hell?” I cried, my psyche finally stretched to the breaking point.

  “Straight and level,” Ben said a third time, despite three more missiles coming our way, threatening my ability to follow his simple instructions.

  “Do what he said, Noah. Otherwise, we’re dead.”

  I looked at Matt, his expression as hard as his words had been. He turned from me and again opened fire on the approaching missiles.

  When nothing made sense anymore, it was better not to question. I looked back at the surround, adjusting our flight pattern to stay straight and level.

  The line appeared in space ahead of us. At first, I thought maybe some of the pixels on the surround had died, because it seemed like the darkness wasn’t part of the universe. But as the odd black line widened, I got the distinct impression that while I was correct and the dark wasn’t part of the universe, I was wrong about its nature.

  Somehow, some way, Ben was literally ripping a hole in reality, and he wanted me to fly right into it.

  I wasn’t sure I would get the chance. Matt had only managed to take out one of the three missiles coming at us. I wanted more than anything to juke or change course, to take evasive action and save us from the remaining projectiles. I didn’t think it was crazy that no part of me desired to see what existed outside of spacetime. Then again, it had to be better than ceasing to exist at all.

  Countering every instinct I possessed, I kept my hand steady on the stick, rapidly approaching the tear and hoping we made it before the projectiles slammed into our already damaged stern. Matt finally hit another one with the guns, leaving only one bearing down on us.

  “When we go into the rift, you’re going to feel an immense sadness like you’ve never known before,” Ben said behind me, loudly enough it was clear he was addressing both me and my friends. “It will only last a few seconds, but it’ll feel longer. Strengthen your resolve, and remember who you are.”

  The entire statement left me chilled. The last sentence, vague and enigmatic, froze me completely.

  I wanted to go home.

  The rift, as Ben had called it, loomed in front of us, close enough now that, in its absolute black nothingness, it was all I could see, both in the surround and through the forward viewport. The missile on the grid had made it inside the cannons’ firing arc, meaning another hit was inevitable.

  Or was it?

  I forced my eyes to remain open as we shot into the rift, the blackness swallowing us up.

  CHAPTER 14

  As the eerie darkness fell over the flight deck, absorbing the overhead lights, even Ben’s glow seemed to be fading. The sadness he’d warned me about hit me like a bull at Pamplona. The air left my lungs, and from one instant to the next, I went from hyped-up anxiety coursing through me to a near-suicidal fugue.

  I stared into the black, my chest clenched in pain as my thoughts turned to my parents. What was I doing out here? How could I let them down like this? Why had I distracted my dad when I did? Why hadn’t I done more to save them after the crash? The questions assailed me like cerebral missiles, battering my already weary psyche, threatening to steal my soul.

  A real or imagined spectral hand—I couldn’t tell which—reached out for me from the black void. Either way, it terrified the rational side of me and beckoned to the irrational. It was both damnation and salvation, and I wanted it so bad that I physically reached out for it, hoping to grab the offered lifeline, though I realized life might not be the true outcome.

  Ben had warned us to strengthen our resolve and remember who we are. Those words saved me. Remembering them, I pulled my hand back just as the apparition reached for it, lightly making contact and sending a chill through every nerve in my body and stretching deep within my spirit.

  I forced myself to think about happier times. Playing chess with Mom. Playing catch with Dad. Going fishing, to ballgames, to the park. Practicing karate. Gaming with the Stinking Badgers. The memories didn’t lift me all the way back up, but they gave me enough buoyancy to tread water.

  Ben had also said it would feel like a long time, even though only seconds passed. He was right about that. The journey through the rift felt endless, the darkness all-encompassing. Finally, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. Or rather, a second hole in spacetime. A way out of this infernal nothingness. We approached it so slowly that it was as if we were slogging through molasses. I wasn’t sure I could come up with enough positive vibes to maintain my sanity for the remainder of the crossing. Even Ben’s light had faded to a dim glow that barely reached me in the co-pilot’s seat.

  And then, like a window opening on a spring day, we were through the rift, and the immediate lightening of my emotional load left me practically giddy. Once we were through the entire way and the stars splayed out ahead of us, I remembered the enemy missile that had been right on our tail. Had it followed us into the rift?

  I looked for it on the grid. Nothing was there. By the skin of our teeth, we had made it through the rift unscathed.

  Well, most of us.

  "Help!" Alyssa's panicked screech pierced my celebratory relief. "Something's wrong with Ben!"

  “What?" Matt exchanged an anxious look with me before we both abandoned our stations and stumbled back to where Ben was slumped in his command chair, his body wracked with convulsions. I went down to my knees on one side of him, Matt on the other. Whimpering softly, Shaq was already nuzzling his chin. Suddenly, Ben gave out a sucking gasp and went limp, his lax form showing no signs of life beyond faint respiration. Confused, both Matt and I cast questioning looks at Alyssa, her wide eyes staring past me, seemingly locked onto something beyond normal perception.

  "What happened?” Matt demanded.

  “I don't know!" She cried, blinking and then looking directly at Matt. “He was glowing. You all saw it” Her eyes swept over my eyes and then Tee’s. “But as we went through…w-whatever that was, the glow started to fade, and he was struggling. I could see it in his posture and expression. The growing exhaustion. The glow stopped just as we cleared the rift. Then he collapsed and went into convulsions.”

  Matt gently shook his friend. “Ben, can you hear me? Ben!” he shouted.

  He didn’t respond.

  “W-what the hell is going on here?” Tyler stammered with rage. “Who was chasing us? Why were they trying to kill us? Why was Ben glowing? And how did he punch a hole through the freaking universe?”

  “Relax,” Matt snapped, trying to focus on Ben as he checked his pulse.

  “Relax?” Tyler cried. “We didn’t sign up for this. Technically, we didn’t sign up for anything. We never signed the agreement. I’m going to sue your ass. Both your asses. I’ll take everything you have for this. You could have gotten us killed.”

  “Tee, this isn’t the time to panic,” Alyssa snapped. “Ben’s in trouble here!”

  “I’m not panicking. I’m angry. These sons of bitches brought us out here without full disclosure. If I had known the freaking Evil Empire was hunting them, I would have taken a hard pass on renting this rust bucket!”

  Shaq lifted his head, glaring at Tyler with bared teeth. The lethal look of them was enough to immediately shut Ty up. He pressed back against his lounger, his shoulders tense as boards, the fingers of both his hands clenched in the overstuffed arms.

  “We need to get Ben to sickbay,” Matt said, ignoring Tyler and looking at me. “The good news is this isn’t the first time this has happened. But it’s been a while, and he’s never gone into convulsions before.”