And with a press of her finger, Hunter blasts the ghosts from the airlock.
The umbilicus shoots away.
Chapter 63
It almost happens as she imagined it. The airlock opens and the force thrusts the hydra out and away. It whips toward her, flailing. She pulls out of its way and watches it strike again and again, too far, and its limbs take the unmistakable shape of human hands. The palms must be ten feet wide, fingers as tall as her. They grab at nothing, muscle without flesh. This terrible mass pinwheels up toward Belinda where the sun’s rays still splash out behind her like a perpetual sunrise. Seconds left before Belinda’s grav jump.
Lana rockets down toward the airlock at full throttle.
She nears the doorway.
“Start thrusters!” she calls.
But time is up.
Behind her, Belinda’s drive revs to life. She feels it even this far away. It reels her in like a tractor beam. The Homunculus begins to recede. She falls up with the hydra. Toward Belinda. Toward the sun.
The Homunculus lunges at her. Fast.
The bow rises slightly as it comes. She spots her friends on the bridge, lit up inside the viewing window. Hunter actually takes one hand from the controls to wave.
The ship rams at her. Blackness engulfs her. She falls through the open airlock, into gravity, into light. She slides along the main chamber floor, hits the ladder and holds on.
Impossibly, Hunter scooped her out of space.
Chapter 64
“Give her everything!”
“This is everything!”
They turn from Belinda, from the hydra, from the sun. Hunter grunts into the controls. Belinda fights them every inch, her grav field closing in. If they don’t reach its edge before she jumps, it won’t matter how great a pilot Hunter is. Space will warp around them, sucking them through a tunnel into the heart of their nearest star.
“Booster!” Gregorian howls.
Hunter looks at him. “What?”
“Booster!”
Jack groans.
Of course.
It’s a military vessel. Capable of more than your average thrust.
Hunter shakes her head. “How!”
Gregorian, finally taking his role as copilot, flips a small switch on the main panel.
The stars melt across the observation window. The force pins Jack into his seat. This is the end. He knows it like he has never known anything before. Belinda has jumped, and they are being pulled backward into the sun’s hellish interior. His thoughts in this moment are of Lana, who must be getting crushed against the main chamber’s wall, and of Kip, who will grow up without his father—not much of a loss for the boy, all things considered—and of his lost friends. Not only the ones he lost to the hydra, but those he lost to the war, to the camp, at their own hands or someone else’s. And he thinks of the men he killed. Their sense of calm when all the life leaked out of them. How peaceful they seemed. That is how he feels now, and he knows they are not angry, but glad that he will be among them soon.
Chapter 65
Lana hobbles to the crew quarters, following the sound of echoing voices. She wears a brace on her right ankle, but tries not to put too much weight on it. She broke it when Gregorian activated the boost thrusters, throwing her against the wall. It could have been much worse, but she’d been wearing one of the Homunculus’s advanced spacesuits. The fabric, when acted upon by sudden force, goes rigid as metal. Suits like that are well worth the price, she keeps reminding Jack. If Dino had been wearing one, he might not have broken so many bones. As she moves toward the voices down the corridor, she slows her pace and tries not to make a sound.
Hunter and Gregorian have been at each other’s throats since the close call with Bel’s grav jump. It’s been two weeks and they’re all a bit stir-crazy on this tiny vessel, but there’s more to it than that. Though they’re all hurting from the loss of their friends, Hunter has taken Stetson’s death especially hard. She won’t talk about it, but it’s there. The other day, Lana overheard her through the lavatory door having a one-sided conversation with no one. “You stupid bastard,” she had said. “Caught your sleeve on the damn doorway?” Lana had shared the particulars of Stetson’s death with Jack, who must have passed the info to Hunter. She had it wrong—it was Dino’s sleeve that caught in the doorway—but this was not the time to correct her.
“Jack might’ve forgotten who you work for, Greg,” Hunter says now, “but I haven’t.”
“You forget same man responsible for your friend death also get my crew kill. I am no loyalty to Jim Dandy or his peoples.”
“Without men like you, there would never have been a Jim Dandy.”
“There is no point in this arguing.”
“When we get to where we’re going, just stay far away from me, alright?”
There’s a long pause. Finally, Gregorian says, “I am sorry for your friends. They die noble.”
“Don’t preach at me, Greg. I know all about noble death.”
“Then you are knowing this is more than most peoples can say at the ends of their life.”
“Sure. I also know that if you don’t stop talking, I’m going to put my foot up your—”
Lana clears his throat and enters the room and immediately wishes she hadn’t. The crew quarters are cramped. It’s a reduced gravity room with two triple-decker bunk beds. Hunter and Gregorian share one of the bottom bunks, and both are completely naked. Hunter sits at the edge, her elbows on her knees. When Lana comes in, she crosses her arms over her breasts, more a gesture of annoyance than modesty. Gregorian lies in the bunk with his hands under his head. He makes no move to cover himself, just raises onto an elbow and looks at Lana. Most of his torso is covered in burn scars similar to hers. This jars her more than anything. Reminds her of the wet salve on the left side of her face and that until she hires a plastic surgeon, she’ll be subject to the stares of strangers. At least Hunter and Gregorian don’t look at her funny. Not even now.
“Can we help you?” Hunter says.
“Um.” Lana backs out and calls from the hall, “The tanks are ready when you are.”
On her way to the grav tanks, she doubles over with laughter.
Jack watches on the bridge’s monitor as Lana helps Gregorian and Hunter into their tanks. She takes their weight and leads them to their pods and provides steadying hands as they settle into the fluid. Sleep seems like a good idea.
Jack rubs his toes. They’ve lost some feeling, but managed to stay attached. Gregorian found an ointment designed for severe frostbite in their medical supplies. The stuff burned like hell at first, but did its job. Another week and he’ll be able to wear shoes again. He’s grateful for this and for other small mercies.
It’s in his nature to feel guilty. He knows that now. But he’s fighting it like a cold. What happened to Justin and Stetson is not his fault, he tells himself. It is becoming a mantra. Lana says they wouldn’t blame him, and that seems important.
He is still processing the fact that they survived. He’d been certain in those final moments before Bel’s jump that they had failed. That he had failed them. It is like a deep bruise somewhere on his body, but he can’t place it. Sometimes he forgets it’s there, but something will remind him and he will feel it pulsing, and he’ll shut his eyes and repeat his mantra. He told Lana about this. She says he’s learning to let go. He isn’t sure of what, but she is probably right.