Isaac turned down the next side corridor and walked quickly, his heart beginning to race. At the end of the corridor, a hatch led to the maintenance shaft for the docking bay equipment. It was the only way to get close enough to the outrider shuttles to sync with one without being seen. Isaac was pretty sure he could do it without alerting the ship’s AI, but he didn’t know the network’s architecture well enough to be sure. This was going to take some time.
After glancing behind him to make sure no one was watching, he swung the hatch open and climbed in. The only light in the place came from a single caged bulb on each level, glowing a sickly reddish orange. He ran down the stairs as quietly as he could manage and pushed into the narrow crawlspace on his knees and elbows.
Pipes and conduit ran along the walls on either side of him, some of them corroding. He slid carefully around a section of exposed and fraying wires. At length, he reached the section where he estimated the outriders to be. By pressing his face against the floor in the narrow crawlspace, he managed to reach around to his back pocket and pull out the console.
“Come on, come on,” he whispered as the device cycled out of sleep mode. Footsteps sounded through the bulkheads somewhere above him.
As soon as the console was active, he toggled through a series of menus, looking for the connectivity options. Thankfully, it didn’t automatically connect to the ship’s network—Reva must have had the foresight to turn that functionality off. But the operating system was one that he’d never seen before, and the GUI was counterintuitive and difficult to navigate. All of the options were in the wrong places, and none of the menu options made sense.
Sweat formed on his forehead as he tried to figure out how to work the damn thing. If he was gone much longer, someone was bound to get suspicious. The crawlspace was too narrow to turn around in, and he soon felt as if the walls were closing in.
Taking a deep breath, he paused for a moment to calm himself and try again. This time, things began to fall into place. He found the menu for connectivity and began cycling through the options.
At that moment, the bulkheads began to hum. Isaac ignored it at first, thinking it was just in his head, but the humming soon became too loud for him to ignore. He frowned and looked around him, only to realized that the floor grating was starting to vibrate.
We’re about to make a jump, he realized.
He paused for a few moments to wait it out. Instead of resolving, though, the humming became louder and more intense. The walls of the crawlspace seemed to collapse on him, while paradoxically growing wider at the same time. He closed his eyes, expecting it to end at any moment, but the buildup only became more intense.
Just when he thought he couldn’t possibly handle it anymore, the universe seemed to flip inside out. He gasped, and in a moment of panic thought that he was outside the ship. But when he opened his eyes again, he found himself lying in the crawlspace exactly as before.
That wasn’t a normal jump, he realized. We must have gone almost a light-year. Maybe even farther.
The thought made his heart start to pound. Normal starships never made jumps that big—it was just too dangerous. The farther one tried to travel in a single jump, the harder it was to predict where the ship would actually emerge from jumpspace. And while the likelihood of crashing into a planet or an asteroid or the heart of a star was practically infinitesimal, emerging in a high density region like a nebula or a molecular cloud could cause irreparable damage.
Not if the pirates are using the jump beacon technology they stole from us, Isaac realized. That technology would allow even a large ship like the Temujin to jump from beacon to beacon with hardly any risk. A voyage of months could be reduced to a few days.
Either way, the message was clear: He and Reva had to escape at the earliest opportunity.
Captives in Obscurity, book 5 in the Sons of the Starfarers series, will be available in ebook form on May 15th. Pre-order or find out more below:
Captives in Obscurity
There is no escape beyond Star's End.
Isaac and Reva are running out of time. Gulchina's cruelty knows no bounds, and on the edge of known space, no one can stop her. But an unexplored planet holds an ancient alien secret that may prove to be a game changer.
There is no escape beyond Star’s End.
The deadliest pirates in the galaxy have stolen the technology that will transform it. Now, on the edge of known space, they are poised to start an empire of their own.
Isaac and Reva are running out of time. Neither of them knows the extent of Gulchina’s plans, or whether the madwoman will keep them both alive after she achieves them.
But an unexplored planet beyond the Far Outworlds holds an ancient alien secret that not even Gulchina has uncovered. That secret will tip the balance in
SONS OF THE STARFARERS
BOOK V: CAPTIVES IN OBSCURITY
