us in like a black hole, or…?”
“Does it matter?” Jeline asked absently. “We’re just going to fly into the heart of it, anyway.”
For some reason, that didn’t make him feel better. “Oh, trust me,” he muttered gruffly. “It matters.”
“Eight clicks away,” Jeline chimed in, and Kogav had to wonder if the woman had a death wish.
“So?” he said again.
“Mhm?” Jeline hummed in question, her lips pressed together in concentration.
“The gates,” he said loudly. That seemed to snap her out of it.
“Sorry,” she shook her head. “They’re distracting, you know,” she shrugged at the screen, and flashed him a nervous grin.
That small smile did things to his chest, and he frowned as he cleared his throat. “They’re portals, right? I mean, how do they work?”
“I guess you could call it a portal,” Jeline said slowly. “We don’t really know how they do what they do, or why they appeared for that matter—”
“You’re joking, right?” Kogav cut her off. “Why don’t I feel like you’re joking?”
“Why do you think you haven’t run into humans before?” Jeline shrugged. “We’re still exploring; still testing them out. And, as far as we can tell, we’re the first ones to come this far.”
Kogav blinked at her. He was certain now, and it wasn’t just Jeline: all humans had a death wish.
“Five clicks,” Jeline read. “Any more questions?”
Kogav squinted at the screen. “We should see it by now,” he said, scanning the holomap for what, he wasn’t really quite sure. “Shouldn’t we?”
“Our ship was set up with alerts specific to jump gates,” Jeline said, flicking the ship to the side as the Thagzars shot another round at them. “Sherre, our navigator, could pinpoint exactly where they were whenever we got close to a new set.”
“Set?” Kogav repeated. “As in, more than one?”
“We’re about to come upon three,” Jeline nodded.
Kogav opened his mouth to say something – anything – about how suicidal she was being, but he couldn’t think of anything that would properly articulate how completely demented she was acting. So, in the end, all he managed was a croaking sound from the back of his throat.
Jeline cocked her head and gave him a funny look. “Are you okay?”
Honestly? Kogav really didn’t know. Not that he normally functioned on being ‘okay,’ anyway; he’d been faking shallow happiness for so long that he couldn’t even tell the difference anymore. Still, sitting in the passenger seat next to a human pilot with her eye on a deathtrap as their only means of escape certainly didn’t sound okay.
And the occasional smells native to his planet weren’t exactly helping him stay sane, either.
“I’m fine,” he sighed. It wouldn’t do to complain now, not when the Thagzars had set up a snake-seven military flight formation behind them. It was fight or flight, and even Kogav knew when to stand down from an unbeatable opponent.
Jeline fixed him with an odd stare for a moment, and asked, “You don’t depend on others much, do you?”
An odd question. “No,” he admitted gravely, absently scratching his wrist and the ink hidden underneath his leather brace there. “I suppose I don’t.”
Jeline
Jeline didn’t know what Kogav’s problem was. Not that she really had the time to sit him down and figure it out; not with three alien enemy ships on their tail.
“Two clicks,” she read aloud, but frowned as she glanced around the empty holomap. She still couldn’t see the jump gates. “Where the fuck are they?” she hissed.
Kogav, nervous wreck that he was, couldn’t seem to hold himself back from worrying out loud. “So you can’t see them either.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I already told you,” she ground out, trying to keep her cool while piloting the pod. “You probably just don’t have the technology.”
Kogav didn’t reply, but then, he didn’t have to. He’d already made his opinion of Jeline’s plan quite clear, and – though she’d explained how it was going to save their asses plenty of times already – it wasn’t a favorable one.
“One click,” Jeline announced. Still no sign of the gates. And yet, the holomap had no problem highlighting the Thagzars closing in…
“We can’t slow down,” Kogav spoke up. “The snakes—”
“I know,” Jeline cut him off. “We aren’t stopping.”
Keeping a hand steady to hover over the controls so she could continue dodging the Thagzar’s lazy attacks, Jeline studied the control panel and hit the only sensible button among the multitude that could do what she needed.
“No!” Kogav yelled, jumping towards her. Luckily, his belt held him back. “Jeline, don’t!”
For a moment, Jeline thought that