“Tamara,” I said quietly, and heard her get to her feet and press herself beside me in the narrow piloting cradle.

We watched as, a thousand years coming, the star began to explode.

CHAPTER EIGHTY SEVEN:

The Dreamer

Quickly, quickly, quickly. I flew the Viper as close to the Nameless’s hull as I dared. “Is this it?”

“Slow down; it’s hard for me to tell,” Tamara said. “I’m used to looking at the ship from the inside.”

The light of the solar radiance spilled around the edges of the wheel. The ancient metal starting to peel. It was lucky we were in the shadow. “Hurry, Tamara!”

“There,” Tamara said, pointing, “there, I think. Do you see that outcropping? That’s the exhaust chute in Lab 17 that we saw on our way out.”

“Good.” I aimed for it.

“What are you going to do?” she asked me. “The docking equipment doesn’t work.”

“I’m going to improvise,” I said, got myself situated over the hull near the exhaust chute, and then rammed the Nameless.

Tamara shouted in surprise, the jolt slamming her into my chair and out of the pilot’s cradle. It rattled my teeth, even in my seat. But when I peered up out of the cockpit about where the Viper’s broken docking chute extended, I saw that I hadn’t quite penetrated the hull.

“Get ready,” I warned Tamara, backing off a bit, and then ramming the other ship once more.

I felt the pop as the docking chute punched through. Immediately I extended the gripper arms, slamming into the ship, preventing us from bouncing back out.

Tamara was already on her feet. “The impact will have caused a decompression,” she warned me. “I’m going to go seal it off,” and she waved Indigo’s gauntlet at me.

“Be careful,” I said.

“I’ll be back with Indigo,” she said.

“Wait!” I said, and fumbled with the collar fastened around my neck. It was warm in my hand with my own body heat. I passed it over to Tamara. “Take this in case there’s any problems. See that switch at the top? You two can use that to communicate if there are any problems.”

She took it gingerly. “I can’t speak Light.”

“Then use it as a proximity sensor. It doesn’t have a long range. The Viper won’t move, but if something happened, Indigo might have.”

She nodded tersely, fastening the collar around her own throat far more quickly than I’d managed around mine. “See you soon,” she said, and climbed up the ladder through the chute so quickly I didn’t have time for another word.

We’d need to get out of here fast. I waited, bent over the cockpit controls, ready to retract the gripper arms and key in the launch sequence as soon as Indigo and Tamara cleared the hull. I waited, and I waited, muscles twitching from being held so taut and still for so long.

Where were they? It wasn’t that far to Lab 17 from here, or it shouldn’t be. Had Tamara been wrong? Had we landed in the wrong part of the ship?