You nearly fall through the door of the ship’s command deck but manage to catch yourself against the back of the empty copilot’s chair.
“Hop in.” The pilot doesn’t look at you, dark eyes fixed on the controls.
“I-I’m an archivist.” Still, the chair is probably safer than standing when the ship’s this unsteady.
“I figured it out!” Eymir pushed through the flaps of my tent, out of breath.
I looked up, frowning at the light blue glow of his bodysuit. Running used a lot of power. Without a properly charged suit, the student from Kiyr could lose the ability to walk in our higher gravity.
“You figured what out?” I asked.
Jupiter’s ferocious lightning crystalized into a hail of carbon and gas raining down on the spaceship that hovered as close to the thick atmosphere as it could manage. Sweat pooled around Alma’s goggles and dripped onto her console as the ship shuddered, nearly buckling under the Jovian pressure. Nothing would make this planet habitable
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I’ve just finished mopping the floor of the Decimator’s control room when two Second Class Henchmen walk in. The big goons leave muddy footprints all over the—formerly—shiny floor. I glare after them, but they don’t even notice me.
Typical.
No one notices me unless they slip on a wet floor, or—
“Again.”
The voice that reached Pulsar along the communications thread was neither impressed nor impatient.
Pulsar pivoted away from the smoldering target at the edge of the training field to face the figure near the far-off arsenal. “But Master U’drec—I executed the maneuver perfectly! Why—”
“Return to start position, Squire.”
It isn’t every day that fate gives you a second chance. Most days she seems content to let the stars direct the courses of time and space—punishing humans for going past their limits. Today is different. Today is a day you don’t throw away.
I, Captain Anton Carrick Stansy IV, stand at the helm
“With muscles like that, you must be from a heavy grav zone.”
The lilt of female admiration cut through the music and clamor of the club. Pete kept the flirtatious smile on his face and turned in the direction of the voice, the spotlights blinding him to the details of the crowd. Bending backward
Has it been long enough? The little voice in her head asked for the umpteenth time. No, one more time. Jyone used the phrase as a habitual counter, marking another revolution around the black hole. One more time around, then I’ll be far enough in the future that they will have forgotten me.
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One of us will die today, and it’s sure as hell not gonna be me.
I’m a billion miles from home, crouched under a pile of ice boulders. Methane rain pours from Titan’s dark orange clouds.
The LCD screen on my forearm pulses red.
THERMAL COIL DAMAGED
REGULATED TEMPERATURE REMAINING: 00:13:24
The sky ray dipped, and I held on as vertigo kicked in. I loved flying when I was the pilot, but being at the mercy of a giant manta ray thousands of feet in the air was a different story. And after two years, I still wasn’t a fan.
I placed a palm
The first thing you notice is light—cool and soft white, pervasive and blank.
You are so comfortable and drowsy it doesn’t occur to you to wonder where you are or how you got there. The temperature is pleasant. There is no sound other than your pulse, no smell besides a faint,
The galaxy stretched out before me, brightly colored stars blinking beckoningly. I stepped toward it, tucking the long chain with its ornate key back into my shirt as I pulled the door shut behind me, closing off the suspended wooden platform with its many other portal doorways. Standing on the edge of the
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