I glanced out the windows, still uneasy for several reasons. A random Sector was fine. Leaving Dark Watch 12 and Captain Bridgebane behind was more than fine, but it was too bad we didn’t have enough power left to get us back to a place we really knew.
“What’s in Sector 2?” I asked, hoping someone else’s brain was already up and running better than mine. “We need a place that can sustain life and has a bright enough sun to recharge the Endeavor.” Unfortunately, there weren’t that many. Asking for a sunny, habitable planet was a tall order.
“Flyhole,” Jaxon suggested.
“Full of criminals,” Shiori declared from behind Fiona’s ministrations.
Well, technically speaking, so was the Endeavor, but no one mentioned that.
And Flyhole wasn’t a planet. It was a spacedock orbiting a barren moon. It had decent sunlight, though, and would have what we needed for repairs, just not at an acceptable price. Also, the Endeavor was as likely to be stripped by space rovers as restored to working order.
Fiona deftly patted down the sides of the sterile tape she’d used to seal Shiori’s cut, her steady hands those of someone who’d patched up plenty of people.
“Good as new,” Fiona said.
Shiori murmured her thanks.
“What about Nickleback?” Fiona asked, straightening as she tossed the bloody compresses into the trash.
Nickleback. Nickleback. What do I know about Nickleback?
Oh, right. “Isn’t that the place with the giant carnivorous spiders?” Another one of the Overseer’s science experiments. The modified arachnids had been supposed to help aggressively control the growing pest population on one of the galaxy’s more productive crop planets. If I remembered correctly, it had worked for about a dozen years. Then the spiders had begun to breed into something bigger, scarier. Now natural selection was at work, and the humans on that planet weren’t coming out on top.
“Oh, yeah.” Fiona grimaced. “Forget Nickleback.”
A bright electrical snap from my console sent me jumping back so fast I slammed into Big Guy’s solid frame. My controls went utterly black for the first time ever. Every whir, bump, and groan that was the constant music under my fingertips went silent, and my throat tightened so abruptly it closed.
Holding my breath, I looked over at Jaxon’s control panel. It was still functioning, thank the Sky Mother.
I exhaled slowly. I needed to get the Endeavor docked and resting fast, or she was going to die on us. And if she died, we all died, too. There wasn’t enough light from the distant stars to impact our solar panels, and the ship’s energy core would eventually drain completely. We’d end up floating. The air-renewal apparatus would shut down along with all the other systems. Without any power, we’d suffocate. I’d seen ghost ships like that, and I’d rather blow up than have a gradual, helpless death be my fate.
I cleared my throat. “Jax, you’ve got control.”
He nodded, and my brain started storming for answers again about where we could go—in a radius we could actually reach.
“Air. Water. Sunlight. Supplies. New parts,” I muttered. What had everything we needed to get us rolling again?
“Albion 5,” Big Guy said.
I tilted my head back to look at him. The colossus was still right next to me, all big and bushy and weirdly reassuring.
Albion 5… I closed my eyes, trying to picture a map of Sector 2 in my head. One system stood out from the rest as having at least two planets the right distance from their sun to sustain life. The smaller rock had required terraforming and was still a work in progress. The larger one had been inhabited practically since the first Earth exoduses had begun. It would have everything we needed, including anonymity.
I opened my eyes again. “It could work.” I looked at my crew for their opinions. “What do you think?”
“I think we can get there.” Miko immediately searched for and then started typing in the coordinates. Once they were actually set, though, she winced. “It’s going to be close.”
That was what I’d feared.
“I’ll redirect all power to the engines,” Jax said, his big hands moving rapidly over his console.
A moment later, the bridge went dark except for the main control panels that were still functioning. Even the low hum of the air recycling system stopped, and Jax’s console beeped out an oxygen-levels warning.
“Even if we don’t make it all the way,” Jax said, “we should still get close enough to Albion 5’s sun to recharge.”
Fiona huffed a little sourly. “Let’s hope so,” she