His eyelids felt pasted shut but Devon forced them open anyway. Zephyr’s alarm systems blared into the medical unit and he felt the ship rock around him. An odd numbness blanketed his left side and for a dazed moment he peered down at it. His shirt was gone and there were straps holding him to the medical table but he saw the loop of bandages sealing his wound closed. The robotic arms were tucked away which meant there was little else the unit could do for him at this point.

“Gravity matrix offline,” Zephyr announced and Devon felt a hard knot coil in his stomach.

They hadn’t gotten away yet.

They were still fighting.

Why hadn’t they gotten away yet?

“Zephyr, unlock me,” he said, his voice rasping into the room.

“It is inadvisable for you to move at this point, Master Devon.”

Something had to be wrong with the conduit. That was the only logical reason for them to still be here. Devon took a steadying breath and shook his head.

“Zephyr. Unlock me.”

“Yes, Master Devon.”

The straps zipped away from him, slipping back into the table as he rolled onto his shoulder. The anesthetics made his vision swim and his entire body felt heavy. He draped his legs over the table, felt the magnetics in his boots connect with the floor, and forced himself to stand. He swayed, gripping the edge of the table for a long moment as he tried to coach himself into breathing right.

Just to his left he saw Relo in the stasis tube and cocked an eyebrow.

“Right,” he muttered to himself. “Fry his brain and then make him an ice-cube. Great plan.”

The halogens flicked out, emergency lights suddenly glowing at the edges of the floor, giving him barely enough to see the path out of the medical unit. Sensing that their time was short, Devon pushed away from the table and staggered to the door. He had to catch himself on the doorframe as the room swung out of focus. Devon squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. S~ᴇaʀᴄh the FɪndNøvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Focus, dammit!

Opening his eyes again, he felt his head bob, his neck muscles not quite ready to hold its weight up and ground his teeth together. He leaned heavy against the wall, using it as a crutch as he left the medical unit and started for the nest.

His mind filtered through the design plans for the conduit, trying to find his mistake.

He made it to the central chamber, realizing at last that there was no pain in his side. Devon touched the bandages circling his torso and paused to catch his breath.

No pain, he thought with a grimace, but no strength either. It was an effort just to get his boots to keep moving across the floor, fighting the magnets as they kept him from floating away. He heard the distinct thud of his left boot hitting the floor and had to pull to get his right foot to move again, sliding it forward just one more step.

There was nothing wrong with the conduit, he told himself.

He’d checked those schematics so many times there was no way he’d made a mistake. Something else was wrong, something that only he could fix and no amount of weakness was going to stop him from fixing it.

Devon glared at the corridor. Somehow it looked longer than it ever had before, stretching out and making his heart ache in despair, but he kept moving. The lights stretching along the walkway blurred in his vision. He blinked hard, forced himself to focus, and pulled his left foot away from the floor.

He reached the nest to find his mother floating by the ceiling, the manual control gloves the only thing keeping her anchored and for a moment was too stunned to do anything. Her bootless feet looked ridiculous, toes curling as she continued to fly the ship with the control gloves. She hadn’t noticed him yet, she was too focused on trying to get them out of there alive, and he remembered what he’d come for.

“Zephyr, get the nanoplating up,” she ordered, and then, with a worried glance at the hatch; “Seach, how much longer?”

Devon limped toward the hatch, ignoring Zoe’s exclamation at the sight of him. He didn’t hear Seach’s response and he wasn’t certain Jorry had either because her attention swerved to him.

“What the hell are you doing?” She demanded.

He reached the ladder and glanced up at her. “Boots, huh?” He said instead of answering her.

Jorry’s mouth twisted, the look he always got when she was fighting between anger and laughter, and then she had to concentrate on flying again. Devon started down the ladder, sparing one last glance at where Zoe was still clinging to her safety harness. He wondered what his mother would do once they made the jump, how she intended to keep herself from slamming against the ship’s walls when they accelerated, and then remembered that they had to actually fix the conduit before that would be an issue.

The secondary nest was dark. Devon turned, squinting into the gloom at where Seach was half buried in the panel just behind the metal table. Devon gripped the table for support and moved to the conduit, panting as the exertion from his walk finally caught up to him. Seach pulled out of the panel and paused.

“Dev …”

Devon shooed him away from the panel and knelt down, grimacing as the first flash of pain pierced through his side. Seach moved immediately, clearing the way for him. Dead cables were strewn everywhere and an open toolkit displayed the impatient, unpracticed fight his father had been conducting in his absence.

Whatever was wrong wasn’t with the conduit, it was with the panel, which relieved Devon but presented several new problems. He took a deep breath and plunged headfirst into the panel, blinking several times to let his eyes adjust to the blue light. He scanned the cables, saw immediately what his father had been trying to do, and got to work.

He pulled two cables and redirected them, hoping to compensate for some of the overload that the conduit was bound to give. For several seconds he forgot his injury, forgot the danger they were all in, and let himself become absorbed in the internal structure of the ship. Every cable was like a vein, pumping energy through Zephyr like lifeblood, and if he got one wrong it could clog the entire ship.

The rightmost cable wouldn’t light. He grabbed it, reached blindly with his left hand until he could feel the toolkit.

“What do you need?” Seach asked.

“Splicer.”

Cold metal hit his palm and he pulled the tool into the panel, flicking the laser splicer on. The tip glowed white and he set it to the end of the cable, cutting through thick rubber to expose the wires beneath. Then he jammed the whole end back into the inlet, heedless of any safety precautions.

The cable flickered to life and he shut the splicer off, holding it with his teeth as he found the conduit tubing and plugged it into the inlet. A second later he heard the conduit whirr to life and breathed in relief. Seach clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“Got it!” Seach called to the hatch, hoisting Devon out of the panel at the same time.

Devon didn’t argue as his father manhandled him, drawing him away from the panel and to the wall straps. Giddy lights swarmed his vision but he felt the straps pull tight against him, felt his side spike with sudden pain at the contact and hissed.

“Sorry, Dev,” Seach said and stepped away.

Devon watched his father shrug out of his jacket and toss it aside, moving to the metal table. It looked a great deal like the torture table, now that he thought about it, and Devon swallowed. One of these days he was going to convince his parents to get rid of that thing.

He thought about warning Seach against it, warning him about how much pain Jorry had been in during the last jump, but he knew it wouldn’t make a difference. There was no time. If they stayed here they were all going to die.

They were out of options, as Jorry would say.

“Tell me when we’re in position,” Seach said and he knew he wasn’t talking to him.

A long scar curled around Seach’s left shoulder, disappearing under his shirt, and Devon wondered how he had missed it before. It was jagged and terrifying and he had the sense it went a great deal further, edging near the man’s spine. Seach turned and laid against the table, buckling himself in and Devon lost sight of it.

“Zephyr, open secondary viewport,” Seach ordered.

Devon flinched as the port opened, remembering all too clearly what was about to happen. He had the dizzying sense of standing in space again, many stars blinking to life just outside, only this time Europa was just beneath them. He could see the icy expanse curving into the distance, Jupiter’s massive form rising behind it, and watched as Zephyr turned away from them.

An instant later light streaked into the nest. He heard Seach grunt and looked away from the view. Every muscle in Seach’s body was taut with strain, his fists flexed at his sides as he used his taps to power the ship. Devon glanced at the conduit, praying it would work. He could see it whirring in its space just behind the table, blue lights streaking in a quick circle as it cycled power.

Zephyr jerked forward, accelerating with the push Seach was giving it and Devon suddenly remembered the gauge.

What was the number he’d stopped Jorry on?

He cursed, trying hard to remember.

Seach shouted something unintelligible, the sound nearly swallowed by the rattle of his taps against the metal table. Devon did his best not to look at him, concentrating everything he had on that one button that would shut the system down.

1025, he remembered. She’d ordered him to shut it down at 1025.

But he hadn’t. He’d shut it down earlier because she’d passed out and the jump had pushed them past several planets.

The gauge slid to 975 and Seach continued to shout.

Devon calculated quickly, running through every variable he could think of, every angle they might be making in their escape. If he stopped them too soon they would be floating through space for several days before they reached Mars. If he stopped them too late they could barrel right past Mars and Earth and find themselves near Venus.

He glanced at Seach, his heart twisting at the anguish he could read in his father’s face.

Definitely going to get rid of that table, he thought.

995.

Devon slammed his palm into the button and the viewport snapped closed, plunging the room into darkness again. Devon could hear Seach breathing heavily, heard his father groan and shift against the table, and praised God the man was still mostly awake. He closed his eyes just as his mother’s voice came through the hatch.

“Somebody better talk to me!”

He chuckled, the image of her floating through the primary nest fresh in his mind. She was probably still up there, he remembered. But at least now they weren’t being shot at. At least now they were gliding through space, heading away from the Consulate and toward safety.

“Seach? Devon?” Jorry called again.

“You’re so bossy,” Seach said with another groan and Devon chuckled some more. “We’re really going to have to work on that.”

~*~*~

Jorry let Seach stab her with another dose of adrenaline and looked away. Her eyes caught on the little glass tube now holding the bullet that had been lodged in her thigh. It still had traces of her blood on it, which was mildly disturbing but somehow better to look at than the needle Seach was brandishing. She felt the pinch in her upper arm and wrinkled her nose in displeasure.

“What are we going to do about Kenzie?” Devon asked from the medical table.

They’d managed to get him back to the medical unit and he seemed to be accepting the fact that he would not be allowed out of bed until Zephyr’s scans said it was safe. He’d managed to tear three of his stitches in his escapade through the ship and as much as Jorry was glad they were all safely cruising away from Consulate space, she was not going to watch that stubborn boy kill himself.

“Do we need to do anything?” Jorry asked petulantly. “I kind of like her where she is.”

Seach grunted his agreement.

“Mom, you can’t leave her in a smuggler’s hatch the whole way to Mars. She’s going to need to eat.”

Jorry rolled her eyes. “Fine. We’ll move her back to her room and Paul can feed her.”

Devon caught her gaze and held it. He looked tired but not feverish, which was a good sign. And the contrary expression on his face was normal, so she relaxed a little. She didn’t want to think about what had almost happened to him so she focused on her irritation at Kenzie instead.

“Mom,” Devon said and the gravity in his voice made her take notice. “She was only trying to protect her family. Just like we protected ours. You can’t blame her for that.”

“She could have trusted us, Dev.”

“Based on what?” He asked, gesturing with one arm. “It’s not like you gave her a warm welcome. You had secrets of your own you were protecting. There’s no way she could have trusted you and you know it.”

Jorry sighed and rubbed her face. She felt her taps repairing the hole in her thigh, felt muscle and tissue reconnecting and thought of Kenzie in that smuggler’s cache. She was just a scared little girl trying to do her best for her sister, Jorry knew that, but dammit if she didn’t want to strangle the girl for her deception.

“Alright,” Jorry said, her voice muffled behind her hands. She looked up again and met Devon’s gaze. “I hear you.”

She didn’t want to hear him, but she heard him.

“I’ll let her out. She can roam as she wants.” Jorry lifted her finger. “But the nest is still off limits.”

Devon smirked at her and nodded, inasmuch as he could nod while strapped to the medical table. “I can deal with that.”

Jorry slowly stood, stretching her sore body. She saw Relo’s face behind the stasis tube, saw the steady readings just beside it that said he was still alive and stable, and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do with him now. Zephyr’s scans showed that there was extensive damage to his final tap but his brain was still miraculously intact, which meant there was a chance he might wake up again.

If they found the right doctor to help remove the broken pieces from the back of his neck, she thought.

“Captain,” Zephyr’s voice chimed into the room. “All calculations point to a destination of Earth. We will bypass Mars and reach Earth’s satellite within six weeks, four days, and eleven hours.”

Jorry glanced at Seach. “Nice push.”

He grinned and shrugged at her. “Don’t look at me, I was just shoving energy into the engines. It was your son who did all the major calculations.”

“Mm,” Jorry said and winked over at Devon. “And I hear he fixed what you broke down in the hatch.”

Devon smiled back at her as Seach rose to his own defense.

“All I did was plug in a cable …”

“Which overloaded the whole panel,” Devon mentioned.

“Et tu brute?” Seach asked, looking so offended that Jorry laughed.

She saw humor soften his face as he glared at her, a smile twitching at the corners of his lips. Jorry grinned unrepentantly at him, her heart suddenly swelling at the sight. She stepped to him, ignoring the fact that Devon was still present, felt his hands slide around her waist and took a long, deep breath.

They were safe, she thought and squeezed him tight. The Consulate knew they were out there, would be coming for them, but for now they were safe. She closed her eyes, felt Seach drop a kiss on the top of her head, and smiled.

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