by Elin Wyn
“You’ve disabled our map,” Kogav snapped. He actually sounded angry, and Jeline weirdly wanted so badly to look at his face, but she couldn’t, not without risking a hit from the Thagzars. “Absolutely no one can fly a pod like this,” he ranted. “Or any ship, for that matter!”
Jeline ignored him and clenched her jaw to keep from snapping. A day ago, she doubted that his words would’ve bothered her – no, wait, it was two days, wasn’t it?
Two days ago, they had made the jump; that she pulled, for the first time, off her station at the controls.
Two days ago, they almost died from a never-ending bombardment of meteors crashing into their ship.
And now here she was, alive two days later, with a shaky confidence and an alien whose words were cutting her twice as deeply as they ever should have.
“Change it back,” Kogav urged. “Hit the button and call the screen back up.”
“I know why you’re scared,” Jeline admitted grudgingly. She’d been counseled against it too, back when she was a student at the academy.
In fact, according to the various veterans and educated personnel there, the worst thing a pilot could do during a tour was decommission their holographic display.
From what Jeline understood, it was mostly because it would leave a crew blind without any computer readings, but also force the captain to call the thin plastic window up.
Lyra called it the ‘Widow’s Window,’ and for good reason. As an old engineering fault that doubled as a fragile backup plan, the window was better known for cracking and causing ship-wide deaths than successfully acting as a second display hatch.
Funny that the Thagzar’s designs had one, too, then; though, if there was any way around building one, she supposed that Earth would have done so already.
“If you know, then you’ll make the pod reset the screen and keep us from dying by a pebble,” Kogav demanded.
Part of her wanted to. Actually, if she were being honest, a big part of her wanted to. It was kind of confusing the hell out of her.
“No,” she growled back. “My plan will work. It’s got to be around here!”
“You know what else is around here? Thagzars. You know who you can’t see because you put the holomap away?” Kogav said impatiently. “The Thagzars!”
“Yes, and you know what’ll happen if I block this again?” Jeline hissed, gesturing to the window. “If your enemy catches up, then we’ll get boarded, maimed, and killed.” Taking a moment to draw a breath, she added, “And I don’t want that. Do you?”
“So where are your gates, then?” Kogav swept a hand at the window. “Where are the portals that you made us save our warp for?!”
“They’re here!” Jeline said confidently. “I know they are.” She just wasn’t sure where, exactly. And without the holomap, she had no way of knowing if the Thagzars were aiming another round at them or not. She had to act quickly. “Do or die,” she muttered to herself.
Taking a chance, she swept her hand over the controls and watched, fascinated, as the pod’s window reflected every wistful movement she made. Unlike the holomap, the first person perspective didn’t offer any geographical readings or ship to star ratios, but damn if it wasn’t beautiful.
“C’mon, c’mon,” she muttered to herself, trying to keep her mind on the matter at hand.
The gates had to be there; they didn’t just disappear, not if the last decade of earth exploration had anything to say about it. “Where are you?” Jeline sighed into her hand, spinning and flipping the ship to hopefully catch a glimpse of the jump gates.
She didn’t expect to come face to face with one after a sudden jerk to the left.
“Holy—!” Kogav cried out in the seat next to her.
“Oh,” Jeline breathed.
“What?” Kogav jerked his eyes away to look at her. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
It was. But unlike the shoddy black holograms that ships always represented the gates as, this was a circular mass of rolling light; a thunderstorm in a mirror, hovering just before them as it silently churned in place.
Still, there was something off about it that even Jeline could recognize.
“We can’t go through that,” she shook her head.
“What?!” Kogav sputtered. “But you said—”
“See the green flickering around it?” she pointed, remembering what Willovitch had said. “It’s highly unstable.”
“Then get us to another one!” Kogav urged. “There is another one, right? I mean, you said there were three—”
Boom!
The ship shuddered as something collided with them from behind. Jeline was immediately reminded of the meteor show and wondered if she’d fallen right into the middle of another one. If they had, they wouldn’t survive without the proper readings. She reached for the controls.
“Shit!” Kogav cursed, flinching as a flash of purple light flew past them. “They caught up. Jeline, get us out of here!”
As another three purple shots just barely whizzed by them, Jeline gritted her teeth and swiped a hand over the controls. “Forward it is, then,” she muttered under her breath.
With a stomp of the floor pedal and another quick sweep of her hand, the pod shot forward into the gate.
“No!” Kogav yelped. “Not that—”
He cut himself off as they dove, head-first, into it, and practically threw himself against the console separating them to fling his arms out and block Jeline from the window. His movement caught her off-guard, and she had to grab one of his wrists to make him get out of the way so that she could get a good look outside.
The gate was beautiful, in a deadly sort of way. The light it was emitting seemed to roll like sands of stardust as it tumbled in upon itself, and Jeline found herself wishing that she could bottle some of it up, if only to show Sherre later. And yet, as they moved closer, the sickly green halo flickering around the gate’s edges stripped Jeline of her wonder.
The green and the gate were obviously clashing, as if one was trying to infect the other.
“Shitshitshit,” Kogav chanted beside her, his arms still splayed out like a shield before her as the pod made contact with the gate. Immediately, Jeline felt the familiar jolt of jumping as a thousand sparks shot up and down her arms, and she watched as the green flickered like lightning while the gate seemed to invert in on itself from where their ship was pushing through.
“It’s not a gate!” Kogav yelled. “It’s a black hole!”
But Jeline knew better. “It functions like one!” she yelled back, straining to be heard over the sudden clicks echoing all around them. Jumps were usually silent, so it made her uneasy to hear the ship reacting to it. “Just hang on!”
Sure enough, once they were halfway through the gate jumped them forward, and in the blink of an eye they had been shot out the other side.
“Are you okay?” Kogav asked, finally removing his hands to brace himself on the console and look her over.
“I’m fine,” Jeline grumbled, not wasting a moment as she flicked the screen back up and tapped on the floor pedal. And a good thing, too – almost as soon as they shot off in the other direction, the holomap pinged as three red dots appeared on the screen one right after the other.
“What’re you doing?” Kogav frowned. “Isn’t this where we were supposed to turn around and go back through?”
“Just,” Jeline sighed, exasperated from his incessant nagging. “Give me a second!”
That made him pause, and he finally stopped crowding her to move back and sit patiently in his own seat. Well, maybe not patiently, but—
“Look out!”
They’d finally done it: the two newest Thagzar ships after them had turned on their warp, and they were catching up fast.
“Hang on,” Jeline warned, watching the red dots. If their warp capabilities were anything like Earth’s, then they wouldn’t be able to turn during a warp.
She waited until the last possible moment.
“Jeline!”
Kogav yelled.
“There!” she hissed, yanking the controls to the left as they flipped out of the way, spiraling down as the holomap showed the red dots flying right over them. “Yes, yes, yes,” Jeline breathed, whirling them around to face the gates again.
As the dots slowed on the map, she bit the bullet and pressed Kogav’s least favorite button again.
“Wait!” he made a grab for her arm.
“If I wait, then they’ll be upon us again!” Shaking him off, she didn’t wait for the screen to finish putting itself away before she stomped the pedal down and made for the general direction that the gates were in.
The only problem was, there were two green gates, and she wasn’t sure which one they’d just jumped through.
Kogav
Kogav didn’t know whether to shield Jeline or shrink in on himself. Either way, he figured it wouldn’t have much effect if the window decided to shatter on them and steal their oxygen.
“Hit it!” Jeline ordered.
“What?” Kogav shouted, his eyes focused on the ‘jump gates’ just ahead of them. They were like nothing he’d ever seen before, but something that chillingly reminded him of silence; of death.
“The warp button!” Jeline yelled. “Now!”
Because he wanted to send them barreling into one of those things even faster. Still, he knew what was waiting behind them if he didn’t, and with a harsh swallow he slammed a fist on the control panel.
It happened in an instant. One moment they were about five clicks away, staring down three gates, and the next, they were flying through the gate on the far right. Kogav resisted the urge to close his eyes, and watched as the green seemed to strike out and grab their ship, only to flare up and overtake the body of shifting light that it was outlining.
“Is it…?” Jeline gasped.
It was shrinking.
And yet, in the blink an eye they were already through it, alive and exhausted on the other side.
“Get us,” Kogav breathed, “Out of here.”
“Wait,” Jeline frowned, and with a soft movement that felt almost dizzying after the warp, she turned them around to face the gates again.
It made Kogav feel sick to see that the one they’d just passed through was half the size of the others, and shrinking.
“Is it eating itself?” Kogav asked, disgusted as the green flicked itself around the diminishing light like a thousand thin teeth.
“I’ve never seen this,” Jeline brought a hand up to her mouth. “It’s unprecedented.”
Meaning she didn’t know if it was about to pop out of existence or explode and kill them in the aftermath.
“We need to get out of here,” Kogav touched her shoulder, doing his best to mirror the comfort that she’d shown him earlier. “Before the Thagzars—”
Jeline cut him off with a gasp, and he didn’t have to ask why. There, struggling to make it through the jump gate, was the front of a Thagzar ship.
Kogav almost shouted for her to move, before they started firing, but then the green of the gate seemed to attach itself to the Thagzar’s vessel like whips of fire, and shrink in on them impossibly further.
Boom!
Jeline flinched as the gate seemed to implode in on itself and disappear, leaving half the Thagzar ship to flicker off and fall onto its side.
“They’re… They’re…” Jeline trembled.
“Dead,” Kogav said gruffly. Moving his hand down her arm to brush a thumb over her wrist, he said, “It’s time to go.” Before the other green gate decides to blow up and possibly latch onto them.
Jeline didn’t say anything, but Kogav didn’t miss her scramble to set the ship’s screen back up over the window.
“Um,” she said, obviously frazzled. “Where, um—did you have a destination…?”
“Here,” Kogav offered, leaning forward to gently take her hands from the control panel and place them in her lap. Flipping a switch, he slid the controls back over to himself, and tapped the floor twice for the pedal. It reverted back to his side easily. “I’ve got it from here,” he promised.
Jeline nodded and seemed to relax for a moment. Then, as Kogav put in the coordinates for the nearest space station (at least, the closest one that he trusted), she lifted an arm and started tugging at a zipper on her suit.
He wondered if she had some sort of medication hidden there, but then she tugged out the drink sack he’d given her earlier and ripped at the bindings.
“Uh,” he muttered, unsure if he should intervene as she lifted it to her lips and upturned the whole thing into her mouth. Sure, he could empty a mead bag in a minute flat, but a human?
Well, to be fair, he had no idea.
“I’m setting the ship to a place that will have supplies for us,” he said instead, turning a blind eye as she coughed the drink down. “Relax – without Thagzars at our backs, this will be a very easy trip.”
“So long as we don’t run into any others,” Jeline said dryly.
“Well, yes,” Kogav shrugged. No use in lying to the woman. “But the odds of that are very unlikely.”
“Are you saying there’s a chance?” Jeline grinned, dropping the empty bag to the ground at her feet.
“I’m saying there’s more than a chance,” he frowned. “So don’t worry.”
“Aye, aye,’ Jeline giggled, and it took Kogav a moment to realize that the mead was kicking in.
“Yep,” he replied sarcastically. “Cause I’m the pilot; nay, the captain,” he proclaimed, grinning in spite of himself.
Jeline was quiet for a moment, but then she shrugged to herself and said, “My last captain took the controls away, too. ‘M just not good with them, I guess.”
“What?” Kogav furrowed his brow. “That’s crazy. Jeline, you’re one of the best I’ve ever seen!”
“Mm,” she hummed, closing her eyes. “Then you’ve never seen the captain.”
“I don’t need to,” Kogav said confidently. “In fact, on my planet, you’d be a warrior with the way you drive,” he winked.
“Cause I’m suicidal?” she asked lazily.
“Cause you’re fearless,” Kogav insisted. “Not that you’d want to live on my planet.”
“…Why?” Jeline yawned.
“Heh,” Kogav shook his head at his own thoughts. “You know Peshdushdar? Yeah, we make that wasteland look like a regular Eiztar metropolis.”
“Oh,” Jeline wrinkled her nose. “That sucks.”
“Tell me about it,” Kogav grunted.
“Why didn’t you…” she said slowly, trailing off.
“Jeline?”
“Mhm,” she hummed, closing her eyes. “Why didn’t you make it nicer? Like the moon.”
“The moon?” he repeated. “Oh, wait, you mean your moon. Heh, yeah, that would’ve been nice,” he said, glancing at her. She was curled up in her chair, her breathing slow and her mouth slightly parted.
“Yeah,” Kogav said quietly, shrugging to himself as he let Jeline sleep. “Would’ve been nice if the Thagzars had never invaded and used that same sort of technology to turn our frozen planet into a desert. I mean, hell,” he chuckled to himself. “I doubt living through an ice age would’ve been much better, but at least it would’ve been ours.”
It hurt to think about, sometimes. About the invasion, about the change to their planet and no one else’s; about the fighting pits created for the snakes’ amusement.
About the fact that they couldn’t do a damn thing about it, even with the Thagzar technology.
“Too bad the Thags hate the cold, but wanted our resources more,” Kogav sighed.
Jeline
Jeline woke to a thumping headache behind her left eye and a dry throat.
“Oh, you’re up.”
Heavy footsteps made her open her eyes, and she almost jumped to find a topless Kogav leaning over her from above.
“Damn,” he said, his purple eyes narrowed as he looked at her. Without a word, he moved an arm and pressed the back of his han
d to her forehead.
“Um,” Jeline said awkwardly.
“Ah, good,” Kogav smiled. “You were just blushing again.”
As he stood up, Jeline could feel her cheeks burning anew, and she quickly moved to sit up herself. “Sorry?” she said, embarrassed.
“No worries,” he waved her off. “You just do it a lot – not that there’s anything wrong with it, I mean,” he said, grabbing a white shirt from the floor. “Actually, is it because of your hair? I only ask because your crewmates weren’t really—”
“Kogav,” Jeline frowned, looking at a red marking on his arm. From across the room she couldn’t tell if it was blood or a tattoo. “What’s that on your wrist?”
The alien stopped dead. His new shirt was halfway over his head; his arms extended and his wrists bare from his leather braces. Jeline knew she must’ve misspoken, and she mentally scrambled to think of something else to say.
“It’s something the Thagzars gave me,” he finally answered, his words muffled from under the shirt.
“I’m sorry,” Jeline blurted. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” he said, yanking his shirt the rest of the way down over his chest. Sighing, he sat on the edge of the bed and shrugged. “Where to start?”
“You don’t have to,” Jeline shook her head.
“I don’t mind,” Kogav said emotionlessly, staring at his own wrist. “I doubt you can read it,” he said after a moment, and he held it up to her. To Jeline, it looked like a triangle and two diamonds. “They’re numbers,” he explained. “My prisoner code. My name.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jeline said, feeling stupid for apologizing. She just couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Yeah, well,” he said, and Jeline could tell that he was forcing a grin as he hopped back to his feet. “It happened a long time ago.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Jeline blurted with a scowl. “You remember. You said it was easier for the other planets... Kogav,” she stood up. “Was your planet the last to earn your freedom?”
“Something like that,” he said quietly, snapping on his brace again. “Regardless, I already set up the ship while you were sleeping,” he said as he pointed at the door. “Got some provisions, so we are good to go.”