“Where should we go?” Molly asked. She looked at their current course and realized she had subconsciously begun flying back toward her home village and the rift—the very last place they needed to be.

“Mount Jeffers?” Cat asked Scottie.

“Probably what everyone else is thinking. So, no.”

“We could hide out in the woods beyond Ashron,” Cat said. “There’s tons of clearings big enough to set down in. Maybe we should wait there and see if things calm back down.”

“Which way is that?” Molly asked, turning to the others.

Cat pointed through the carboglass, her face rigid. Molly followed her trembling arm, adjusting course to match the direction she was pointing, mistaking the gesture for an answer to her question.

“What the flank?” Scottie muttered, leaning forward between the two seats.

Ahead of them, descending through the atmosphere nose-down like a dropped dart, was a Navy StarCarrier.

“Holy shit,” Cat whispered.

Molly pulled back into a hover, sinking down toward the grasses.

Cowering.

The almighty bulk of the greatest class of starship ever built was descending from the heavens. Tilted slightly—falling slower than gravity warranted—the thing seemed to be straining against the inevitable, its forward thrusters raging to slow its impact. The great ship’s nose disappeared over the horizon, and then the rest of the monstrosity came to a sudden, sickening halt.

They all waited, breathless, for some cataclysmic noise to accompany the horrific fall. They watched for the ship to crumble, tip over, or maybe even explode.

It did none of those things.

Impossibly, the tail of the great StarCarrier remained in the same position. Askance. Aloft. Thrusters pointing up to the sky from which it had plummeted.

It just stood there, perfectly still. Terrible and lifeless.

33

Anlyn wrapped her hand in Edison’s and squeezed one of his large fingers. “How confident do you feel about this?” she asked.

“Ninety-two percent,” he said. “Rounding down, of course.”

Anlyn frowned; she let go of his finger and hovered her own over the hyperdrive button. The coordinates for a class V star were locked in the computer, a sight that ran counter to everything she knew about astral navigation. Red lights flashed and alarms sounded, warning her of the poor choice of arrival coordinates. Only once before had she ever jumped while overriding a hyperdrive’s alarms, and she was pretty sure that decision, for better or for worse, had been the most momentous of her entire life. This decision, however, seemed to rival that other one.

She closed her eyes, said, “I love you,” and then pressed the switch.

Her stomach dropped. More warning alarms went off.

Edison screamed beside her.

Anlyn opened her eyes and caught a wave of harsh light across her face right before the windshield darkened, returning things to normal. A thousand white dots crawled across her vision like albino ants. She blinked rapidly, trying to sort out the foreign alarms and worrying about Edison.