Chapter 2
ZARA
The ship bucked like a wild animal, and I gripped my seat restraints so hard, my hands were numb. Through the viewport, I could see flashes of electrical discharge turning the sky into something that looked like it came straight from a nightmare.
“Hold on,” Captain Korvath called from the pilot’s seat.
His voice was steady, and that made me feel a little bit better about our situation.
Surely if we were facing an imminent fiery death, he’d sound a little more stressed about all this.
He seemed to be taking this just fine. Every time he adjusted something on his control panel, it was deliberate and calm, like he was having a conversation with the ship itself.
I’d never seen anyone pilot through conditions like this.
The electromagnetic readings that I could see by peering at the navigator’s screen were so far beyond normal parameters that they should have been impossible.
The storm wasn’t just weather anymore—it was a living, breathing monster that wanted to tear us apart.
“How are you doing that?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the groaning of the ship’s hull.
“Doing what?” Torven didn’t look back, but I caught the slight tilt of his head that meant he was listening.
“Flying through this. By now, the electromagnetic interference should be scrambling every system on this ship.”
“It is scrambling every system on this ship,” he said grimly. “I’m flying by feel now.”
By feel. Stars preserve us, we were trusting our lives to the instincts of a grumpy Destran who’d lost his last crew—how, I didn’t know.
The terrifying part was that I was starting to believe he might actually have this in hand.
There was something about the way he moved, the way he anticipated the ship’s responses, that made me think he could pull this off and land this thing.
At least, I hoped he could.
The ship lurched violently to the left, and I heard something crash in the cargo hold behind us.
Probably my equipment cases. The irony wasn’t lost on me—I’d flat out ignored the captain’s orders and brought all my equipment, including backups, because I was terrified of not being prepared.
Now it was all going to be destroyed anyway.
“Captain,” Henic called from his station, and the fear in his voice made my stomach drop. “Navigation is completely dark. I’ve got no instruments, no guidance systems. We’re flying blind.”
“Life support is failing,” another crew member reported. “Backup power is holding, but barely.”
I reached over to the seat next to me and took Cleo’s hand as the blood drained from my head. “I’m sorry,” I said as she squeezed my hand.
“For what?” Her jaw was locked and her expression grim, but she slanted me a confused look.
“This is my fault,” I said in a thready rasp. “I should have seen this coming. I should have predicted that the magnetic field interactions would create this kind of cascade effect. But nooo, I was so focused on my comprehensive analysis plans that I missed the most important detail of all.”
“Zara,” Cleo said, then swallowed hard. “Not your fault.” She couldn’t even use complete sentences. That was how I knew Cleo was scared. She didn’t show it, but she sounded it.
“It is,” I insisted. “If I’d taken into account the variable—”
“I love you, Zar,” Cleo cut in, and squeezed my hand hard. “But shut up.”
I did, biting my lip and pressing away the feelings of self-disappointment. I always covered all the bases. I always had all the data and was prepared for everything. But not this.
“Dr. Rivers,” Captain Korvath said quietly. Something in his voice made me turn to look at him. “What is your professional opinion about this weather pattern?”
“The storm is feeding on itself now,” I replied. “It’s going to keep getting worse until…”
“Until what?”
“Until it burns itself out. And that will take a while.” I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I should have seen this in the readings. I should have warned you.”
“You did warn me,” he said firmly. “You told me we had to land before it reached full intensity.”
“But I didn’t realize—”
“Zara.” The use of my first name stopped my spiral of self-recrimination in its tracks. “You gave me the information I needed to make the right call. That’s your job. Getting us down safely is mine.”
Before I could respond, every light on the command deck went out.
Emergency power kicked in a heartbeat later, bathing everything in red light that made Torven’s grim expression look even more forbidding. Alarms wailed from every system like a symphony of warnings that basically amounted to “we’re all going to die.”
“That’s it.” Torven shut off the alarms and turned to the main cabin to address Cleo and I, and the other eight members of the crew. “Everyone to your assigned escape pods. Now.”
They were the very last words anyone wanted to hear. Escape pods meant abandoning ship. It meant Torven saw no way to land safely.
“Move!” he bellowed, and suddenly the small crew was in motion. The four pod hatches had been closed, making them look like a simple metal cabin wall, but now they opened up to reveal red-lit chambers. We’d all been assigned one when we first came on board. I was in pod number one.
I unclipped my own restraints with shaking fingers, and Cleo appeared beside me, her face taut but determined.
“We’re going to be okay,” she murmured into my hair.
Oh, how I wanted to believe her. We clung to each other as the ship bucked around us, trying to maintain our footing as we made our way toward the pods.
The bay had become a scene of controlled chaos. Eleven crew members, including Cleo and me, stumbled toward our assigned pods as the doors hissed open along one wall. Each pod was designed to hold three people, except for one, which held two.
“What pod are you in?” I asked her. We’d never discussed this. We never imagined we’d have to discuss this.
“Three,” Cleo said. “You?”
“One.” Stricken, I looked frantically around, terrified of being separated from my friend. “Can we trade—?”
Cleo grabbed my arm. Her dark eyes were wide with fear, but she was trying to put on a brave face for me. “We’ll be okay. The pods are designed for this. We’ll find each other on the surface.”
“I know,” I said, but my voice came out as barely a whisper. “I know we will.”
She gave me one last fierce hug, and then she was stumbling toward pod number three. The two other crew members were already in there. I watched the pod door seal behind her with a horrible sense of finality.
What if I never saw her again? What if the pods scattered across the planet’s surface and we couldn’t find each other? What if—
“Rivers!” Captain Korvath’s voice cracked like a whip. “I won’t tell you again.” His eyes were like green fire, but there was a desperate edge to the corners of his mouth. His skin swirled with chaotic shades of red and yellow.
I stumbled to my assigned pod—the last unit near the end of the bay.
My legs felt like they were made of jelly.
Inside, the pod was small, just large enough for a few bodies, basic life support and emergency supplies.
It looked like a coffin. Of course they’d given me the only two-person pod.
The antisocial scientist who didn’t play well with others.
But everyone else was gone. That meant I had to share it with…
“Torven,” I leaned out of the opening and called to him, “aren’t you coming?”
“Get in the tranking pod and go, Rivers!”
I retreated back into the cramped space with my heart racing. The control panel was simple—just a few buttons and a display showing the pod’s status. Torven!” I shouted. “Come with me! There’s room—”
“Hit the eject button,” he shouted back. “That’s an order.”
An order. Right. He was the captain, I was a passenger, and this was his ship. His responsibility.
I looked at the eject button, a red circle protected by a clear cover. All I had to do was flip the cover and press the button, and I’d be falling toward safety while he stayed behind to…what? Go down with his ship like some old-timey storybook ship captain?
Like hell.
“I’m not leaving without you!” I shouted.
“You don’t have a choice! Eject, now!”
“Then get in here with me!”
“Rivers—” He strode over to the pod, reached inside and flipped the cover. With a stormy look, he slammed the eject button and yanked his hand out, expecting the hatch to slide closed.
But nothing happened.
He pressed it again, harder. Still nothing. The door was still open, the pod was still attached to the ship, and neither of us were going anywhere.
“Why isn’t it working?” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
Torven locked eyes with me and right then, both of us knew something was very, very wrong. “Hit the button from the inside.”
I did, only because I was certain it wouldn’t work. “It’s not responding.”
He leaned into the pod, his hands moving over the control panel with quick efficiency. I was suddenly very aware of how close he was, close enough that I could feel the heat and fear coming off him in waves.
“The door mechanism is jammed,” he said, and I heard fear in his voice for the first time since this nightmare started. “The electromagnetic interference must have fried the circuits.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Not in time.” He straightened, running a hand through his dark hair. “Damn it.”
“Torven.” I reached out and grabbed his arm, feeling the solid warmth of him beneath the fabric of his shirt. “We’ll figure it out.”
He looked down at me, and for a moment I saw something raw and vulnerable in his pale green eyes. Then the mask slammed back into place.
“Get out of the pod, Rivers,” he said curtly, hurrying back to his control station. “I’m landing this fucking ship and I need you at the communication station.”
I climbed out on shaky legs, and he grabbed my shoulders, steadying me when the ship lurched again. “But I’m not a—”
“Listen to me,” he said, his voice low and intense. “I swear on my life that I will get you to safety, but you must do as I say. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“Good. Now move.”
It kind of felt like I wasn’t entirely attached to my body anymore, and that was my scientific assessment of my current state of being, but I made it to the console formerly operated by a nice Destran female named Benda.
She’d seemed nice, anyway. We’d only been on this ship for two days.
Not enough time to get to know anyone, really.
Through the viewport, I could see the escape pods winging away from the ship like bright sparks, whipped away into the churning wind. Their emergency beacons blinked in the chaotic darkness before disappearing from sight.
I sat down, gripped the edges of the console, and tried not to think about Cleo plummeting toward an alien planet’s surface in a metal can, probably terrified.
“Where are we trying to land?” I asked, forcing myself to focus on practical concerns.
“Grid section fifteen,” Torven said, his hands flying over the controls. “There’s a weather-monitoring station there emitting a pulse. I’m detecting a small section of lesser winds there. We might be able to take shelter until this storm passes.”
A weather station. Of course. Leave it to me to end up stranded at the one place on this planet that was designed for studying atmospheric conditions.
“How far?”
“Twelve minutes, if I can keep us in the air that long.” He glanced back at me. “We’re running on backup power, but is there any chance you can tell me what the surface conditions are like?”
I looked at the large, curved screen before me, grateful to have something useful to do.
This was a new type of interface, and it likely didn’t have enough power to scan anything, but I delved into the menus and found the scanning systems. The readings were incomplete, but I could make out the basic parameters.
“High winds, electrical activity, and…” I frowned at the display. “You’re right.”
“What?”
“There’s a pocket that is less stormy near the weather station.” I frowned. “Weird. The atmosphere is reading as toxic, but the levels are fluctuating so wildly, it’s almost like the storm is changing the chemistry of the air itself.”
“Can we survive outside?”
“Maybe?” I threw up my hands. “This scanner is damaged. Either way, we’d need shelter fast, and even then…” I trailed off, staring at the readings.
“Even then, what?”
“Even then, I’m not sure how long the shelter would protect us.”
The ship groaned around us, and I felt us losing altitude fast. Through the viewport, I could see the planet’s surface rushing up toward us—barren rock and twisted metal structures that looked like they’d been abandoned for decades.
“Hold on,” Torven said, and I heard the grim acceptance in his voice.
We were going to crash. There was no avoiding it now.
I watched Torven’s face as he fought with the controls, trying to angle our descent and use reverse thrusters to lessen the impact. His jaw was clenched with concentration, his skin shifting through vivid flame tones, mannerisms I was beginning to recognize as his emotional tells.
He was terrified. But he wasn’t giving up. “Brace yourself.”
As we plummeted toward the surface, I realized something that should have scared me more than it did: I trusted him. This male who’d been nothing but gruff and professional with me, who’d criticized my equipment choices and questioned my methods, was going to save us.
The ship hit the ground with a force that rattled every bone in my body.
Then everything went dark.