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