As the group advanced, Greg saw the Toravai fling bolts of lightning at their pursuers. The very ground was charged with energy the nearer they flew. Inside the Stardust, the lights flashed on and off in the presence of the powerful and unstable current. The central computer was surely next. If it failed, there went their hope of escape. Greg panicked at the thought of the ship becoming an expensive paperweight, or more aptly, a tomb. It wasn’t a heavily armored vessel, nor was its air supply unlimited, meaning an immediate launch was their only chance to survive. At that key point of decision, Sohrab appeared again. He placed his hand on Greg’s shoulder and looked straight ahead at the chaos unfolding just outside their window.

  Upon receipt of a message she had no way to acknowledge, Nash summoned a forcefield that both enveloped her friends, and pushed back the Repho momentarily. She captured the three Toravai within her power and flew them all the remaining hundred yards to the ship’s door. At once the electronic disturbances inside ceased. Greg initiated the sequence to fire the engines. The craft’s landing props retracted as it began to float above the ground, sending out clouds of dust that temporarily blinded the pirates. Sohrab left Greg’s side and opened the passenger door as Nash, Mia, and Kory crashed onto the floor. Zol was still outside, hanging onto the exterior of the vessel, firing off what final energy he could muster to disperse or destroy the Repho. As the ascent grew steeper, he pulled himself inside and slammed the heavy door behind him.

  “Come on, think! You have to remember! What did you see?” Sohrab shouted in vain at Kory. She laid on the floor, covered in fresh cuts and bruises, clothes charred. Her assailant sat atop her, holding her scorched face in his hands and imploring her to remember what she saw out there so that he could see it too. He had a theory only she could prove.

  “Get off her!” Zol thundered as he turned from his position at the door to see what Sohrab was doing. He grabbed the psychic by his neck and pulled him away, punching him in the eye and flinging him to the ground in one swift motion.

  “You idiot, you don’t understand! How could you possibly understand?” Sohrab shouted as he writhed in pain upon the floor. “I saw…I saw you flash and falter out there. You went…you went…”

  “Went where!?” Nash demanded, pulling herself up with difficulty, fighting the vessel’s upward motion all the way.

  “Another damn place! Wherever the spaceships go! Can’t you see that!?” Sohrab propped himself up with his left hand, leaving the right to cover his wounded eye. “You didn’t see the way they blinked in and out of being back there? Why don’t you think for once in your life!”

  “Sohrab,” Nash threatened. “Now is not the time!”

  “Then when!? When is the time to discuss these concepts that are too inconvenient for your fragile comprehension?” He railed, ignoring Mia as she crawled over his legs and climbed into the seat beside Greg.

  “Hey guys,” Greg called over his shoulder at the veritable mess behind him. “Do I need to pull this thing up higher? Because it looks like they’re rallying out there to fire at us!”

  “Yes! We need to be in orbit yesterday!” Nash commanded, as she held onto a wall for balance.

  Nobody needed to tell him twice. With a sharp lurch, Greg pulled the steering manifold close to his chest, forcing the ship upward through the thin, atmosphere. Those unseated clung to anything solid they could find to avoid being tossed about like goldfish in a carnival bag. After their pained ascent, the pressure was on to make the jump, as no one knew if those Repho still alive would scramble their own fleet to give chase.

  Greg loosened his grip a bit as they approached their cruising altitude above Rallus-Beta, even though they still had a ways to go to break free of the larger planet around which it orbited. “Want me to take her all the way?” He called out as their pace slowed.

  “It’s okay,” Nash grimaced, fighting her way across the lurching floor to the pilot’s seat. She was thankful for him tagging in, but the need had passed. He slipped from his station and surrendered control as seamlessly as he’d assumed it. “Go on and get yourselves nailed down,” she told the others. Zol helped Kory from the floor and took her to a seat. Greg offered Sohrab a hand, but he waved him away and sulked towards the back on his own, still clutching the bruised side of his face. Nash prepared to fly them further away when she noticed Mia sitting beside her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought you said the co-pilot doesn’t do anything?”

  #

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “You need to try. I’ll give you whatever you need, whatever it will take to remember. Just remember!” Sohrab demanded of Kory yet again. He sat across the aisle from her as they climbed towards the stars. Like with all moons orbiting gas giants, the outward trek took longer before the jump could be made.

  She was a little more coherent now than before, and wanted nothing less than to remember what he was asking. “Just stop,” she moaned, forcing her eyes open so as to see any other image than the memory of that unknown place. “I won’t, I can’t.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Sohrab insisted, extending his left hand towards her. “But if you’ll only let me take the burden for you…” He gazed at her fervently through his lopsided eyes. She gave him a sad glance in return, then lowered her head in pain.

  “Leave her alone!” Zol ordered from the seat behind Kory. “We should have never let you on here, reading people’s minds like that!”

  “Rest assured, you’re safe.” The psychic scoffed.

  “Knock it off!” Kory shouted through the rush of ascension. She addressed Sohrab first. “If he didn’t beat you hard enough the first time, I’ll finish the job! And as for you…” She twisted around to point at Zol. “He’s not completely wrong. You know we saw something unreal, or at least we skipped across the surface of it… Just not now, please!”

  Sohrab gazed out the window to his right at the rushing stars, overlooking Kory’s hollow threat in favor of her solid acknowledgement. Perhaps he didn’t need her memories to be as fresh as possible. In any case, the matter would have to wait until she was willing, or at least alone. He couldn’t get a read on her at all, as if some barrier existed between them. Never mind the other two. He had no confidence in Zol or Mia’s ability to process what they had seen if anything.

  Behind him sat Greg, curiously quiet for the time being. Since relinquishing command of the ship, the wheels in his head spun down a different road. He pulled a notepad from his jacket pocket and began to sketch discreetly, flipping sheet after sheet as he refined the concept. This wasn’t the time to pitch ideas, but he didn’t feel the need to focus-group it anyhow. If he built it, they would come.

  Once free from Rallus’s gravitational field, they made the jump without hesitation. Nash engaged the autopilot and left her seat, breathing a heavy sigh as she walked towards the living area in the back. As she passed them by she received a look of solemn understanding from Kory, equally beaten and ragged. Nash touched her shoulder lightly. Zol, stoic as ever, looked respectful, deferential even. It was a good feeling. Across the aisle from her battle companions, the non-fighters beheld her bruised and dusty form with equal parts avoidance and guilt. When she stepped through the door to the other side, there was a brief silence, until they heard her shout: “Why is there scrambled egg on the ceiling!?”

  #

  The time after departure passed easily. It was a two-day journey to the third and final stop before Celhesru, giving the injured just enough time to recover. All the while, the Human kept himself busy tinkering away on whatever voltage enhancing gear that had survived the battle. He had big plans for the next iteration.

  “They should have taken me with them,” Sohrab whispered eerily as he appeared beside Greg, startling him and causing him to drop the tiny screw into the mess of materials strewn about the table.

  “Kinda busy right now, guy.” Greg was determined not to lose his concentration as he searched to regain the miniscule piece.

  “No, you don’t understand…” Sohrab pressed on.

  “Apparently none of us do.” Greg mumbled, still immersed in his work.

  “Nash was wrong. The Repho did have minds worth reading. And they didn’t take over that port to have the Vercoden for themselves.”

  “Oh yeah?” The Earthling’s interest was faintly aroused, but not hardly enough to give the interloper his full attention.

  “When they were approaching, I did a sort of a… broad spectrum thing I’ve been working on. Never you mind how, but I learned the Repho who followed our friends didn’t believe themselves to be pirates or thieves at all, but the saviors of every populated world. They don’t want to stop the Iolites specifically from having control, but anyone! In their heads, Vercoden and its associated uses are ripping all of space apart.” He paused to give Greg time to respond, but the man only lowered his work to listen more. “It all flashed by in an instant and then it was gone. You should know it’s hard to absorb so many thoughts at once. But I felt I saw these… flashes, these great orbs of energy, appearing out of nowhere in the dark, large enough to vanquish a whole planet, or a moon at least…”

  Greg turned the thought over in his head, then chose his next words carefully. “I don’t need to say it out loud, because you’ll know anyway. And as tired as you are of hearing this, it is absolutely not the time to bring that up, maybe not for a long while. That much was made abundantly clear to me in my last line of work.”

  “And what did happen to that old place, exactly?” Sohrab, not content to surrender just yet, leaned in closer, knowing full well the topic was brought up the first time they’d worked together on New Galveston.

  “I was the first to ‘evacuate.’ Maybe you could say I saw the writing on the wall.” Greg straightened himself up but lowered his eyes all the same. “As far as I know, the others got out too… by official means, not on the bootleg express like I did. And then… the whole planet crumbled. Dissolved into nothing like its moon before. Something about the shockwave of the first explosion destabilized it beyond saving. I guess it was only a matter of time.”

  “Good on you,” Sohrab said on the way out. “The plot thinnens.”