“Shut up,” said Chase. He glanced over at Parker, whose dark hair was plastered to his face with sweat. His eyes were closed, and Chase hoped he was oblivious to the conversation.
“I've activated the distress beacon,” said Mina. “We're not too far from a commerce route. It's only a matter of time before a ship sees it and picks us up.”
Maurus snorted. “Fantastic. I'm sure the Fleet will be on top of us any moment now.”
Chase's stomach plummeted.
“Not necessarily,” said Mina. “There are plenty of trade ships out here that could pick up the signal. And if it's the Fleet that finds us, then I suppose you'll just have to face the consequences.”
Maurus said nothing for a moment. “I'm a dead man as soon as I step on any Fleet ship,” he finally muttered.
“That seems like something you should have been prepared for, given what you did on Trucon,” said Mina.
Maurus stamped the back of the seat again. “I told you I had nothing to do with the attack!”
“Then tell us who did,” said Chase.
“There's a traitor within the Fleet, but it's not me. I was sent on a solo mission to Trucon to investigate a report of nighttime slave traffickers outside of Rother City. Shortly after I arrived I was ambushed by four Fleet soldiers. They were the ones who set the thermodetonators. The silver case you just gave away? I took that from one of them. It contained the maps and access codes for the oxygen plants that were attacked, but more importantly, there were orders that probably could have been traced back to whoever gave them.”
“That makes no sense. Why would the Fleet attack its own colony?” asked Mina.
“I don't know! Nothing makes sense anymore.”
Chase's thoughts were still on the silver case. “If you had information about the attack before it happened, why didn't you try to stop it?”
“After I took the case, I was just trying to stay alive. I didn't actually look inside it until I was in your Starjumper, after everything had happened. It would have been too late anyway. They'd already sabotaged the plants before they came after me.”
“How did you end up in that wrecked spacecraft?”
Maurus's voice began to lose its vigor, his anger deflating. “Because once I escaped from the soldiers, I was chased and shot down by a Kekilly mercenary. He must have been hired as a backup in case the initial plan to kill me failed. And I would've been a goner if you and Parker hadn't found me.”
Chase started to tell him how they'd found his wreckage over Mircona, but Maurus kept talking, the words pouring out of him like he couldn't stop now that he'd started. “When I woke up in the cargo hold of your cruiser, I thought maybe I'd been captured, and the first thing I did was go through that case, to see if I could find any clues about what was going on. So then when I learned what had happened on Trucon, I already knew who'd done it. I planned to take everything in the case straight to my captain, but while we were traveling to Qesaris, something else came across the newsfeed. I saw that I was being framed for the entire disaster.”
Chase took a deep breath as understanding dawned on him. This was why Maurus had looked like he was losing his mind during their flight to Qesaris.
“My captain, aside from sending me on a completely bogus mission to Trucon, was the first person to publicly accuse me,” Maurus continued. “So I know he's one of the traitors, but I don't know how many other people are involved. If I took the evidence to the wrong person, they'd just thank me for returning their property before shooting me in the heart. That's why I was trying to get back to my homeworld, where my people will keep me safe until I can clear my name.”
Mina hunched over the console suddenly.
Chase leaned forward and looked at the puzzle of numbers and bars, but he couldn't decipher a thing. “What's happening? Did someone find us?”
“No. Something's wrong,” she told him. “We're losing speed way too fast.”
“What?” Maurus wriggled up to a seated position and peered over her shoulder. “Why are the cambering shields at half power?”
“Because something's failing in the drive system,” said Mina. “Look at the CF levels.”
Maurus cursed under his breath. “Thank you, Vo. He's given us the most useless, poorly serviced escape shuttle in the galaxy.” He looked on for a minute. “You've got to let me pilot.”
“That would not be in Parker's best interest,” said Mina.
Maurus made an exasperated noise. “I'm not going to run this marble hopper to Lyolia. It'd take a month and we'd all be dead long before we arrived. Untie me and I'll reconfigure the energy cycles. I can make sure we get to the next colony.”
“Just tell me what to do,” said Mina.
“Piloting isn't something you tell, it's something you feel. The way you're running the vehicle, we'll burn up all the energy before we get anywhere. And once the power's gone, we won't last half an hour out here.”
“Please, Mina,” Chase said. “Let's untie him. He's a good pilot.”
“We can't trust him,” said Mina.
“I'm not the villain you think I am,” said Maurus.
Chase turned in his seat to get a look at Maurus's face. “You swear everything you're telling us is true?”
Maurus scowled. “Of course.”
“Can you prove it?”
Maurus laughed bitterly. “I could until a few hours ago.”
With a sinking feeling, Chase realized what Mina had done to Maurus by giving away his silver case. “Let him pilot,” he told her. “It's not like he can do anything to hurt us.”
Mina was silent, calculating. “Fine. I'll go in the back with Parker. But if you try anythingâ¦,” she warned.
Maurus wriggled around on the floor of the shuttle so that Chase could undo the bindings on his hands. With a little artful squeezing, he swapped places with Mina and helped her transfer Parker's limp body into the back. He glanced over at Chase before starting at the console. “I'm sorry about what I said about Parker. I'll do my best to get him help.”
Chase said nothing and watched tensely as Maurus set to work, fingers sliding over the screens as he muttered to himself.
“How does it look?” Mina asked from the back.
“We're down to just under a camber of two, but I think I can hold it steady here.”
“What's a camber?” asked Chase, more to distract himself than out of curiosity.
“It's a measure of bending.” Maurus rubbed his arms and flexed his fingers. “The shuttle's engine bends space around us so that we can move through it at a speed faster than light. Most important invention in humanoid history.” He glanced at Chase, and frowned. “I'm surprised you don't know this.”
Feeling stupid, Chase leaned back in his seat and looked out the window. He didn't ask any more questions.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
The escape shuttle had been designed for emergencies rather than comfort, and after about eight hours trapped inside, Maurus and Chase were both shifting uncomfortably in the front seat. There was no noise from the back, where Mina kept watch over Parker.
“How's he doing?” Chase asked.
“Not well,” said Mina. “No one's picked up on our signal yet?”
“Stupid Shartese garbage.” Maurus flicked a screen. “I can't tell how strong our range is. I'm really fighting these flow levels.”
Chase looked back to see Parker lying still, his head in Mina's lap, skin pale and damp. “What can we do?” he asked.
Mina just stared back at him with her implacable gaze, making it impossible for Chase to read whether she thought Parker would make it or not.
Chase looked out the window, but the stars visible through the portholes seemed to barely move. The idea of getting stuck out here, an inconceivable distance from anywhere, made his skin crawl.
Maurus leaned back from the console and sighed. “The Federation was supposed to put more range extender stations out in some of these Naxos clusters, but apparently that's another project that got caught up in red tape.”
The entire statement was made up of words that made no sense to Chase. “What exactly is the Federation?” he asked, knowing that the question would sound strange, but tired of always feeling like he was two steps behind everyone else. “I mean, I know who's in it, but what does it do?”
“What is the Federation?” Maurus repeated incredulously. “Chase, where are you from?”
Heat rose in his cheeks. “I don't know. I mean, I have amnesia.”
“But aren't you and Parker related?”
“No, he kind of found me. He and Mina were helping me when the whole Trucon thing happened.”
Maurus stared at Chase. “I had no idea.” He paused. “So when we were in the Starjumper, Mina was incapacitatedâ¦?”
“Someone had been chasing us.” Chase stopped, unsure how much detail to give. But it did seem that he and Maurus had a common enemy, and more than that, he
wanted
to tell him everything. “Soldiers from the Fleet.”
Maurus narrowed his eyes. “What?”
A sudden series of strangled beeps came out of the console. With a shudder, the shuttle began to spin around in a slow arc. “No no no no no,” muttered Maurus, leaning in to the controls, his face pinched with concentration. Gradually their gyration slowed to a stop, and he leaned back and smacked the console.
“Cursed Shartese! Vo didn't do the proper upgrades on his energy storage units. I overloaded the flow and we just lost three fusion chambers. Electrical systems are failing.” His fingers flew over the screens. “We're going to lose all power very soon.”
Cold horror crept over Chase. This was it. They were going to die stranded in the middle of the cosmos. “What do we do?” he asked in a small voice.
Maurus stared at a circular graph on the screen filled with dots and numbers. “There's a Zeta planet nearby. The atmosphere is a little thick, but there's plenty of oxygen and we should be alright if we can get there. Mina, is that okay?”
“Do what you can,” she said quietly.
“What about Parker?” asked Chase.
Maurus's dark eyes were filled with anguish. “I'm sorry.”
Chase turned his head away so Maurus couldn't see his expression. How had it come to this?
“I'm turning off every possible system to conserve energy, so it's going to get really cold. I'm turning off the gravity generator as well. Buckle yourself in.” A moment later, the track lights along the walls of the shuttle blinked out, leaving only the dim bluish glow of the operating console as a source of light. Chase felt his body begin to lift off the seat, and his arms floated up alongside him.
The air inside the shuttle turned icy cold, and Chase tucked his hands into his armpits. His breath came out in white plumes.
Mina murmured something to Parker in the back and passed a silver insulation blanket to the front seat. “Chase, take this. I've got another one for Parker.” Chase struggled to pull the floating blanket around himself. Maurus turned away from the console for a moment to help him unbuckle and wrap up.
“Aren't you c-c-cold?” asked Chase.
Maurus tugged the blanket tightly around Chase's shoulders. “Can't pilot if I'm all bundled up.” Chase caught his eye for a moment. Maurus's face was intense, his expression unreadable.
The minutes inched past. Chase's hands and feet tingled with cold, then burned, then went numb. He grew drowsy and had trouble staying focused on Maurus's actions. His eyelids sank closed.
“Mina, I've had to decrease oxygen production,” he heard Maurus say thickly. “You may need to take over for me.”
Mina said something in reply, but Chase was drifting under again.
“We're getting close.”
Chase forced his eyes open, and Maurus pointed out the tiny orb of the Zeta planet in the shuttle's portholes. Their approach to the distant clay-colored planet was agonizingly slow. Chase tried to force himself to stay awake and watch, but he had developed a fierce headache, and his numb feet ached.
“We're not going to make it, are we?” he slurred. Maurus glanced at him, then turned his attention to the console without speaking a word. A few exhausted tears hovered at the corners of Chase's eyes. The pain in his hands and feet was agonizing, and he slipped back into semiconsciousness to escape.
“Wake up.” Mina's voice rang out from the backseat.
Chase opened his eyes to see the planet filling up their window. Beside him Maurus was blinking hard and lightly slapping his own face as he focused on the changing numbers.
“There's not enough power for a proper landing, but the shuttle has a parachute that'll slow our descent.” He frowned at the console, looking worried. “Well, the sensor's broken, but it should have one. I'll try to put us down in water. I've got to divert all the power into the heat shields so we can make it into the atmosphere without burning up. Make sure you're strapped in.”
Chase checked his belts and glanced back at Mina, who had wrapped her arms around Parker's torso. She braced her feet against the walls.
“Alright, here we go,” said Maurus grimly. “This is going to be rough.”
As the planet loomed closer and closer, Chase realized that they were not traveling slowly after all, that they were actually hurtling toward the planet's surface at a speed that would smash them into little more than gas particles when they hit the ground. A bright glow from the portholes illuminated the cabin, and the temperature jumped from freezing to terribly hot. Suddenly drenched in sweat, Chase clawed at the insulation blanket, but it was wrapped around him and secured under the seat belt, and he couldn't get it off.
Maurus gripped the edges of the console, watching shifting numbers, his lips moving silently. He frowned and touched the console. “Deploy,” he said loudly. He began scrabbling at the console, his eyes wild. “Override!” he yelled. “Deploy! Deploy!”