When Torran tried to gently move her out of the way so he could use the terminal screen, she nipped his fingers with a low hiss. He glared at her and she glared right back, then she flopped over so even more of her body covered the screen.

That drew a rusty chuckle from him. “Acha torva,” he murmured. He sat back in his chair and she crawled into his lap.

I stealthily pulled up a Valovan dictionary and guessed at the spelling. You win. I smiled. Luna often won, even when you didn’t know you were in a battle. Earlier he’d called me udwist. The spelling was trickier, but he’d either called me stubborn or wizard. I kind of hoped it was the latter, but I figured it was the former.

If he was going to keep speaking Valovan, then I needed to look into a real-time translation module for my comm implant. It wouldn’t be a bad idea before we landed on Valovia anyway. I added it to my list of supplies to acquire on Bastion.

The second ship in front of us in the pattern disappeared into the wormhole. Three minutes later, the anchor gave Starlight the all-clear to approach. I double-checked the course settings and then locked in my approval. The autopilot would take us through. A traversal technically could be manually piloted, but this was one case where the autopilot was an improvement. A tiny misalignment could be the difference between success and failure.

The ship automatically sounded the wormhole warning. Usually traversals were relatively smooth, but occasionally they got rocky. In case the Valoffs didn’t understand the alarm, I hit the intercom. “Two minutes to wormhole traversal. Secure yourselves.”

Over our group comm, Kee, Anja, and Eli let me know that they were secure. Kee also assured me that she was keeping an eye on everything from her quarters.

I let out a deep breath. They might not be here with me, but they were still with me. I took my own advice and shrugged into the harness attached to my chair. The odds of needing it were incredibly small, but it didn’t hurt anything. Torran did the same, then he placed a protective hand on Luna, cradling her close.

I absolutely refused to find it endearing.

The wormhole loomed large on the main screen. The closer we got, the more distorted the view, as if space was compressed in concentric rings, tighter and tighter. I focused on the terminal in front of me. All systems were running well within spec.

Starlight’s engines ramped to full, and a minute later, we pierced the plane of the anchor.

The ship picked up a vibration that had nothing to do with the engines, and time seemed to stretch thin and compress at the same time. The light from the stars spun out into strands that danced around the ship. It was beautiful and nauseating.

Torran clutched Luna closer.