Stars went by in a flash. Hearts stopped in their chests. Breaths were held in waiting to be released from lungs. The universe looked like it had stopped. Then—
The aft right side of the Wrath exploded.
The blinding speed-of-light travel slammed off, and they sped forward on momentum only. Before Trevor could figure out what to do next, he saw his uncle had control of the ship again and was looking at him like his murder wouldn’t suffice.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Nathan hissed. “I didn’t see we were clear.”
Trevor felt stupid; he had thought he was going to get a “thank-you” in there, but no. “I just saved us.”
“You just blew the force drive.”
Kaida wanted to put her two cents in but realized that would only make the situation worse. Instead, she busied herself breaking into the ship’s emergency systems.
Smoke detectors were lighting up one at a time throughout avionics.
“Make yourself useful,” Nathan spat.
Trevor got up off his seat. “C’mon, Booster.”
The two of them ran off to fight the fire, footsteps and wheels clumping down the metal stairs.
Kaida sat there, too overwhelmed to do anything. She had just witnessed the impossible—an entity made of darkness. There was no scientific approach to explain it. Though they were able to light-jump, it wouldn’t buy them much time, twelve hours at most. Instead of worrying further, she finished up what she was doing.
A rumble sounded from the left side of the ship.
“What the—?” Nathan was looking over his displays. “We just lost our emergency beacon.”
Kaida closed her display and sat quietly.
Meanwhile, Trevor and Boost were putting out the sporadic fires. Most of the wiring from the force drive engines had overheated. As soon as they hit the electric fires with suppressant, they died off. He hit the avionic fans on so that the remaining smoke would dissipate. The shelves of wiring were largely intact but thoroughly burned through.
On their way back to the cockpit, Trev saw Daphkalian staring out at him from their holding cell.
The cell itself had been retained from the old design of the ship and had come in handy a few times. The design was pretty old school, with its crisscrossing metal bars. The only thing “new” about it was the electric locks that were fully engaged with steel rods. Daph wasn’t going anywhere.
“You have no idea what’s going on, do you?” Daphkalian laughed. “Your uncle hasn’t told you?”
Trevor laughed himself. There was no other way to react to the man. “No, we’ve gone over the plan. We’re ejecting you into space in a few. We’re just trying to find the right thing for you to wear for the occasion.”
“Jokes won’t help you.” Daphkalian shook his head. “Your uncle knows what I know. I wonder why he hasn’t let you in on it. He knows what the darkness is.” He paused. “He knows about you.”
“See ya around.” Trevor waved the big man off. Was that the plan? Cause distrust among the crew so he could escape? This wasn’t the Old West. Oddly though, something did stick. He thought about the way his uncle had acted when the darkness was coming. There was still something about it that stuck out. He just couldn’t see it yet. And there was no way Nathan knew about his…secret.
He and Boost dropped back down into the passenger compartment and wound their way back toward the front. As they did, Nathan shouted over PA. “Ruveran ship inbound.”
Trev passed the top step and buckled himself back down. “Fire’s out.”
“Good, because we have other problems.” Nathan pointed to the giant blip that had reappeared on their radar.
The radio started crackling again. “Captain Sutherland, this is Commander Argum of Breaker IX. After what we have both witnessed, we do not want to lose another ship, yours or ours. We just want the data pad, and then you may go. Believe it or not, our intention is to use what’s on the pad to stop that anomaly.”
Nathan scoffed.
Trevor knew his uncle would never agree to anything with Ruvera. Nathan was battling them every day somewhere in his mind. They had taken away his life, his family, and his world, and all the training he had ever received was geared to fight them. He would rather sacrifice his life to help kill as many as he could, than to submit to them. Usually, Trevor was all right with fighting Ruvera, but after the bloodlust Nathan had just displayed, he wasn’t so sure anymore. It was like after years of running from the fight, he was ready to reengage them, killing others like himself and Kaida to get his revenge.
“What’s that?” Nathan nodded toward a white-and-blue mass they were floating toward—or, more accurately, was floating at them.
Trevor looked it up on the star map. “Marked as a hybrid-type planet named Frosterrene. By all accounts, it’s a giant ball of ice flying through space with its own gravitational pull and thin atmosphere. It’s experiencing a massive blizzard, planetwide.”
“That’s where we’re going then.”
Trev wanted to object, but his uncle seemed to be himself again, back in calm control. “We’re not going to be able to escape that way.”
“I’m not trying to escape.”
Kaida just sat back and watched Boost roll out of the cockpit. He must recognize the next part of the plan already.
Nathan paused at his controls and looked out over at the giant speeding ball of ice. “Here we go.”
The Wrath lurched forward again, spinning toward the spinning planet.
The radio crackled at the first sign of movement away from the Breaker. It was the Ruveran female commander. “Captain, I heard you were a reasonable man. Sorry to see that’s untrue.”
The Breaker port doors fired open by the thousands. The sleek little jets pinged out and engaged on the their Tiger-37. Automatic countermeasures fired off as the fighters’ weapons volleyed at them.
Kaida peeked at the back ship camera to see open space fill with their fighters. They were still a long way off, but the missiles coming at them were closing in fast. She turned it back off.
“Boost, use the wall,” Nathan called over.
Trevor hated the wall, and for a good reason.
Boost fired it, and behind them, a force-field emitter brought up a large, solid barrier. Like its name, the force field grew into a large wall in space. The forward series of weapons from the fighters hit it. The force of the impact engulfed the missiles that impacted plus the incoming weapons still coming up from behind them. The power of all of it created a type of cosmic explosion that detonated everything at the middle of it, and then the force of it reached their ship.
The tidal wave hit the Wrath, and they rode it into the atmosphere of Frosterrene. Snow and ice hit them and formed across the glass. The temperature inside the cockpit immediately dropped as they flew into the planet’s atmosphere.
Gusts of strong wind carrying sleet were blowing them all over the place. Nathan grasped the yoke, utilized all his training for crash landings, and aimed his craft.
Trevor watched gratefully as the second large grouping of missiles died in the atmosphere, probably falling to the ground as icicles. He held on tight as the ship felt like it was coming apart, and down they went.
Nathan kept the ship aimed between two glaciers. There appeared to be soft powder running between them. It also looked like a landing strip. The rest of the terrain was covered in jagged, sharp ice towers.
Trevor ran through a quick before-landing check just as they struck the tops of the ice pinnacles. Shards of ice careened toward them.
Then the ship hit the snow between the glaciers, and they went through. Nathan realized too late that the snow was too soft. They tunneled deep down into the frozen world. Snow was flung up and hit them, along with rocks and ice until finally the ship slid to stop. Behind them, the tunnel they had created going underground caved in. They were buried alive.
With the Wrath sealed in tight, the Breaker stood watch outside, floating after it. Fighter-bombers continued to pile o
ut.
Argum gave the order to commence bombing the area where the Wrath had just crashed. The fighters zeroed in, fighting against the storm, and began their attack.
Chapter 10