Repair crews had the situation under control, and the Odysseus was still combat ready, but Eric would’ve preferred retrieving his people and withdrawing from the fight without any further multigigawatt exchanges.

He stood looking over the massive central display as the gas giant hung ahead of them and the Odysseus reversed warp. There was a momentary shiver through the ship as it began to “fall” in the opposite direction, but the moment passed quickly. The vagaries of the warp drive were such that everything within the drive’s field was affected equally. Every molecule, every atom, every quark. They all began to accelerate in a given direction without any sense of motion at all for the crew.

Inertia still existed, of course, but it wasn’t relevant for the purposes of the drive.

“Captain.” Perez called him over. “We’ve got an emergency call from Commander Michaels.”

“Damn! How long ago?”

“Time stamp is . . . fifteen minutes,” Perez replied. “He says he’s going down on the inner moon.”

“Alright.” Eric looked around. “We’ve got a vector. Lay it in. I want us warping space to that moon like it already happened!”

►►►

PC Parasite Five

► “Troublesome . . . ,” Penae growled, eyes on the scanners.

The pair of intermittent signals that showed the two life signs they were pursuing had blinked out again, leaving them guessing blindly as to where they were going. Their scrapped vessel was trailing behind his ship, quantum locked for the duration, but the two crew members had escaped, much to Penae’s ire.

“We’re going to have to put men on the ground,” he said. “Inform the troopers; we’re dispatching them to the surface.”

“As you order, Subaltern.”

The moon was an inhospitable spot for any sort of stay, yet was the very thing you wanted if evading advanced scanners was your intent. Penae didn’t know if the pilot had picked it for that reason or just gotten lucky, but either way, he hoped that this pursuit would turn out to be worth his time.

With the Piar Cohn unresponsive, again likely caused by the massive interference in the atmosphere of the volcanic moon, he was on his own for the moment. That was refreshing in some ways, but wouldn’t be if he didn’t have something to show when the ship returned to the Cohn.

“Troopers are ready to deploy, Subaltern.”

Penae nodded. “Bring us in closer, and give them the countdown.”

“As you say, Subaltern.”

►►►

Moon Surface

► Feet pounding into the ash, Steph and Milla ran across the volcanic grit, heading for the solid plateau ahead. They could both feel the ship above them, even without looking. A warp field reverberated through everything in its range. Even in space, approaching one left a voyager feeling like there was a deep rumble coming from somewhere nearby.