Chapter 17 #2
He pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. She smelled like the soap from Athtar and Faith’s guest quarters, clean and floral and nothing like the sterile recycled air of a starship. He wanted to bottle that scent, carry it with him always.
“I’m trying,” he said into her hair. “I know I’m not good at this. At feelings, at relationships, at anything that requires actually trusting another person. But I’m trying.”
“That’s enough.” Her arms tightened around him. “For now, that’s enough.”
They stood like that for a long moment, wrapped in each other while Ari slept peacefully nearby. The ship hummed around them, waiting.
Finally, he pulled back. “We should go. The longer we stay, the harder it is to leave.”
“Is it? Hard to leave?”
He thought about Faith’s warm hospitality and Athtar’s rough friendship, about Laella’s endless questions and the peaceful rhythm of life on Sherae. About what it might be like to stop running, to let this be home.
“Yes,” he admitted. “Harder than I expected.”
She squeezed his hand. “Then let’s go before you change your mind.”
The cockpit of the Vagabond had always been his sanctuary.
He’d spent countless hours here, running through hyperspace, evading pursuit, and calculating routes to places that existed only in legends.
The pilot’s chair knew the shape of his body; the controls responded to his touch like extensions of himself.
But today, everything felt different.
Emma sat in the co-pilot’s seat, Ari secure in a carrier strapped to her chest. She was watching the viewport with wide eyes as he guided the ship up from the docking bay.
“Hold on,” he said, and pushed the engines to full.
The Vagabond shot free of the cliff and Emma gasped, clutching the armrest with one hand while the other cradled Ari protectively. The baby, predictably, seemed delighted—gurgling with excitement at the sudden acceleration.
The ocean fell away beneath them, vast and endless and impossibly blue, dotted with the scattered pink islands that made up most of Sherae’s landmass.
“Atmosphere in thirty seconds,” he reported, his eyes on the instruments. “Then we’re clear for hyperspace.”
“Already?” She twisted in her seat, looking back towards the planet. “Shouldn’t we... I don’t know, say goodbye properly?”
“We said goodbye. Multiple times.” But he understood what she meant. There was something final about watching a planet shrink in the rear viewport, about knowing you might never return.
Sherae dwindled behind them—blue and pink and beautiful, a sanctuary in a galaxy that had precious few of them. He watched it go and felt something twist in his chest.
You could stay, a voice whispered in his mind. You could give up the search, settle down, build the life Athtar found.
But even as the thought formed, he knew it wasn’t true. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The pull of the unknown was too strong, the need to prove himself too deeply rooted. He wasn’t ready to stop running.
He just hoped he didn’t run away from everything that mattered in the process.
“Entering hyperspace,” he announced, and pulled the lever.
The stars stretched into lines, and Sherae vanished. He immediately began entering their destination coordinates into the navigation computer.
The first point on Faith’s star map was a system in Syndicate territory.
Not ideal, but not impossible. He had done business with the Syndicate before, and he knew how to move through their space without attracting too much attention.
As long as they kept their heads down and didn’t stay too long, they should be fine.
Should being the operative word.
“Where exactly are we going?” Emma had relaxed now that they were in hyperspace, leaning back in her seat while Ari dozed against her chest.
“A planet called Veth-12. Industrial world, mostly refineries and mining operations.” Doren pulled up what little information he had on the system.
“The star map flagged a location somewhere in this system. Whether that means another person like Ari or some kind of artifact, we won’t know until we get there. ”
“And the Syndicate?”
“They run this sector. Think organized crime, but on a galactic scale—smuggling, gambling, protection rackets, that sort of thing.” He glanced at her. “Don’t worry. I’ve dealt with them before. As long as we have credits and don’t cause trouble, they’ll leave us alone.”
“That’s not exactly reassuring.”
“It’s the best I can offer.” He finished entering the coordinates and leaned back, stretching his arms above his head. “We’ll be in hyperspace for about three days. Plenty of time to plan our approach.”
She was quiet for a moment, her fingers absently stroking Ari’s wisps of hair. “Can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“The Vault. What do you actually think is inside?”
It was a question Doren had asked himself countless times. He’d read every legend, studied every fragment of Precursor text he could find, pieced together theories from scraps and whispers.
“No one knows for certain. The legends say it contains ‘the inheritance of the Seven’—whatever that means. Some scholars think it’s technology, weapons or ships or devices beyond anything the modern galaxy has achieved.
Others believe it’s knowledge, records of everything the Precursors learned during their millennia of civilization. ”
“And what do you think?”
Doren hesitated. This was the part he rarely admitted, even to himself.
“I think it’s both. And more. The Precursors were ancient when the first modern species achieved spaceflight.
They had thousands of years to develop, to explore, to create.
Whatever they left behind... it could change everything. ”
“Change how?”