Force over Distance: Chapter 71

His mind snapped in half.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Loss of autonomy. Physical injuries. Boundary violations.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 71

Destiny’s lights flickered and reengaged. Monitors dimmed and flared. The air recirculators shut off and kicked back into gear.

Young looked at the ceiling, as though answers might be written there.

His hands were cold.

“I need a visual,” he snapped at Eli. “Audio. Something. Anything.”

“I’d love to help you, but, unfortunately, direct radio emissions from the star are making that impossible.” Eli’s fingers flew over his console.

Again, the power flickered.

“What’s with the lights?” Brody asked.

“Guys,” Young growled over the soft trill of a single alarm. “I need to know what’s going on. What systems do we have, what don’t we have, and why?”

Volker answered. “The EM radiation produced by the flare interferes with any over-the-air or over-the-vacuum EM-based communications, which includes our radios, our kinos, and our sensors. The magnetic flux can induce electrical current in unshielded systems, which’d completely fry all of our circuitry if Destiny wasn’t built to withstand solar energy.”

“What about the shuttle?” Young growled.

“Not sure.” Eli looked up at Young. “It’s probably got enough shielding to prevent anyone inside from getting, like, y’know, lethally exposed to gamma rays, but in terms of stuff they need? Navigation? Propulsion? Induced current’ll fuse circuits like you wouldn’t believe. Rush can redirect power, so, if he’s got somewhere to ground it, he might be able to save key systems, but like—let’s be real. I have no idea how hard that’ll be for him in a piece of machinery that’s—not Destiny.” Eli looked edgily back at his console. “Ask Rush how fried his circuitry is.”

//You get that?// Young projected into the swirl of Rush’s thoughts. //How fried is your circuitry?//

//We’ve got continuous induction in multiple circuits. Navigation’s burnt out. I’m trying to preserve shielding and at least some elements of—// Rush’s projection shattered as his attention redirected from Young to the shuttle’s fritzing displays.

“Pretty fried.” Young let the bridge fade in around him. “He says navigation is burned out, but he’s preserved shielding and maybe something else.”

“Hopefully propulsion,” Eli said tightly. “I’m guessing he can manually compensate for navigation, but if they lose thruster control—” the kid broke off.

“What,” Young growled.

Eli said nothing. The light of the star lit up his hair, gold and orange.

“If they lose thruster control, what,” Young repeated.

“They burn up in the atmosphere.” Eli’s voice was tight and low and he didn’t look at Young.

“This is your fault,” Emily hissed, inches from his ear, har hands braced on the command chair as overhead lights and monitor displays dimmed and flared. “I told you to call them back. I told you.”

Young flinched.

He felt Rush snap at the AI in a burst of furious data.

It flickered and vanished from his peripheral vision.

“Can we do anything?” Young rounded on the Science Team. “There must be something we can do. For the shuttle. For Scott and Chloe. Come on, guys. Give it to me.”

No one spoke.

He paced to the forward view, where a bright arch of plasma rose from the surface of the star. He tried to breathe through the tightness in his chest. He gripped the rail next to Chloe’s station.

What were the odds of luck this bad?

Was this chance?

Something more? Something planned? An existential needle from beyond his physical plane?

At the back of his mind, Rush’s thoughts slowed, crystallized, and shattered apart with layers-deep insight Young couldn’t follow.

“Don’t do this,” he whispered, staring at the star.

“Maybe,” Park offered in a small voice, “maybe it’ll be a short flare.”

“With the levels of flux we’re seeing—“ Volker trailed off. “I don’t think that’s likely.”

“What are you saying?” Young, galvanized, fixed his Science Team with a furious glare. “What are you saying? There’s nothing we can do? We’re in one of the most advanced ships in the entire universe and we have to watch as they burn up in the atmosphere?” He raked the room with his eyes. “Because, if that’s the case, I wanna to hear somebody say it.”

Rush shot him a wave of panicky exasperation.

“They’re gonna crash into the planet,” Eli said, voice grim, expression locked.

“Unacceptable.”

“It’ll happen,” Eli said flatly. “If they have shielding, if they have thrusters, if Rush can compensate for navigation, they might not burn up. If they don’t burn up, there’s a chance he—” Eli swallowed. “There’s a chance they survive impact. We should assemble a team to man the second shuttle so we can—so we can go down and get them.”

“If they hit outside the band they’ll be dead in minutes,” Brody said.

“They won’t.” Eli gave Young a quick, terrified smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “If he can avoid burn-up, he can hit the band.”

At the back of his mind, the vortex of Rush’s thoughts was beginning to fade. Young snapped their minds together. //Rush. What the fuck is going on? Talk to me.//

He heard the chorus of countless trilling alarms, felt Rush’s fingers moving over panels, felt the panicked, mathematical swirl of his thoughts as he calculated the shuttle’s trajectory. //Calm down.// Rush projected a faint wave of reassurance, but not much else.

//I’ll calm down when you give me a reason to calm down.//

In response, he got back a wave of anxiety-laced irritation and, beneath it, was the sense that Rush was about to—

The scientist curled his fingers into the paneling of the shuttle, his thoughts completely in Ancient and totally uninterpretable as he ripped the paneling away in a strange combination of mental asking and taking directed at the shuttle’s CPU. Before Young could stop him, he flung the panel at Greer and plunged both hands into the open circuitry.

“Shit,” Young hissed as the scientist poured his mind into the shuttle processor, interfacing with it in a way Young had assumed he could only perform with Destiny and then—and then, Jesus Christ, he was pulling the shuttle’s algorithms into his own mind.

With a reflexive horror, Young flooded everything he could reach, annexing broad swaths of Rush’s consciousness, trying to keep the shuttle out.

Rush’s thoughts ground to a halt.

“What are you doing?” Emily hissed, her mouth inches from his ear. “He has to change his trajectory or he’ll die. Unless he fires the thrusters, he’ll die.” Her voice was tight with suppressed tears.

Rush projected a distracted reassurance that seemed to consist of the same words, repeated over and over, in Ancient.

Young loosened his hold but didn’t let go. He couldn’t let go. It was like trying to prevent the dislocation of a joint—instinctive resistance against a sickening separation that should not happen.

“Please.” Emily was next to him, her voice breathless and her eyes closed. “Please fix this.”

“What can I do?” Young asked, the words barely audible. “Tell me and I’ll do it.”

She shook her head. “I can’t help him.” Her voice cracked. “I told him I would always help him.”

“Tell me about Scott and Chloe,” Young murmured, his eyes on the plasma arcing out of the photosphere.

“The external seal of the airlock is open,” Emily whispered. “I don’t have additional data.”

They stood in silence.

“I can’t be sure,” Park said, her hands pressed against the forward view as she leaned over Chloe’s console, squinting into the light, “but I think the shuttle altered their angle of descent.” She looked at him, pale and terrified.

“They did,” Young confirmed.

At the back of his mind, Rush’s consciousness swirled, faint and frantic.

“He’s still connected to the shuttle.” Emily gave herself a Jacksonesque hug. “Why isn’t he pulling out? Why wouldn’t he pull out?”

“Why is he fading?” Young asked through gritted teeth. “I went planetside with no ill effects; I should be able to sense him.”

“He powers the link,” Emily hissed. “Not you. He’s not supposed to leave. He cannot leave.” Her voice cracked. Her projection flickered. “He must pull out of the shuttle. Make him pull out of the shuttle. He’s not listening to me.”

//Pull out,// Young projected, holding onto everything of the other man that he could, trying to have any effect on Rush’s mind at all—but within the disorganized and disorganizing swirl he couldn’t tell if Rush had even heard him. //Nick,// he repeated. //Pull out. Pull away from the shuttle. It’s going to crash and I don’t want your mind in there when it does.//

“He’s not pulling out,” Emily whispered, her eyes shut. Overhead, the lights flickered. “Why?”

“Maybe he can’t pull out and survive the crash.” Young curled his hands into fists.

“Maybe,” Emily’s projection flickered. “Maybe that’s what he thinks. I don’t know. He’s too far. He’s too far. He needs to come back.”

“Kiddo.” Young squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s not gonna happen.”

“He needs to come back.” Emily shifted closer to him, her projection flickering. “He can’t leave.”

“Let him go.” Young met her eyes. “Everything you’ve got of him on the CPU. Give it back to him. As much as you can.”

“No,” Emily whispered. “No.”

“Yes.” Young forced the word through a closing throat. “If we’re gonna to get him back, you have to. If you can give any of it back to him, do it now.”

“It will be only information,” she whispered. “He doesn’t have the capacity to process it.”

“Do your best,” Young said, the words inaudible. He pressed three fingers to his aching temple. “Give him what he needs.”

With a strangled cry, Emily vanished.

His headache increased in intensity.

He couldn’t see.

He couldn’t hear.

He couldn’t let go.

He pressed a closed fist to his mouth and—

His mind snapped in half.

Young opened his eyes to TJ. The oblique rays from the star lit up her hair in streaks of yellow and orange.

“He was talking to someone,” Eli said, from somewhere behind his head. “I think maybe it was the AI. It could’ve been Rush, but it seemed more like the AI and then he just—hit the deck.” Eli’s voice wavered. “Do you think that means—”

“I don’t know,” TJ said softly.

Young shifted.

“Hi,” TJ whispered.

At the back of his mind was an unbearable void.

“Hi,” he replied.

She gave him a wavering smile, unable to keep her fear from her face.

Static came from Destiny’s sound system.

“What happened?” TJ whispered.

Young’s eyes flicked away from her, out to his left, where Emily sat, her arms wrapped around her knees, her expression full of misery. Her projection flickered.

“Can you tell,” Eli whispered, his eyes dark, his face bronzed by the light of a treacherous star, “are they alive?”

“I don’t know.” Young drew a hand across his eyes. “I don’t know,” he whispered.

He pushed himself up and dropped his head into his hands, as if they could keep his skull from throbbing its way open. “TJ,” he said, looking at her with difficulty, “assemble a team. As soon as this flare is over, we’re going down there.”

“I need to check you out,” TJ whispered. “Make sure you’re okay.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me that you can fix,” Young said.

She looked away, nodded, and got to her feet.

“Any word on Chloe and Matt?” Young asked Eli.

“Not yet,” Eli’s eyes flicked uneasily toward the star. “Hopefully, they’re off the hull.”

“The airlock is closed,” Emily whispered.

“In the meantime,” Eli said, “is there any chance you could talk to the AI? We’ve lost access to critical systems across the board. Internal power expenditure has dropped by sixty-five percent. The CPU is cranking at max capacity; it’s slowing everything down.”

Young squinted at him. “What the hell am I supposed to do about that?” he asked dully.

“I think—I think the AI is stressed?”

“You’re goddamn right it’s stressed,” Young growled.

Eli opened his hands. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I just thought—” he broke off as the doors to the bridge hissed open, his expression tense, hopeful, waiting, and then—

“Chloe,” Volker said.

“Chloe!” Eli rocketed to his feet. “Chloe. Oh my god.”

Young’s relief felt very far away.

It was hard to stand. It was hard to turn, and when he did, he could barely see her. Her face was pressed against Eli’s shoulder, her arms around his neck, her pale hands clenched into his sweatshirt. Scott, Barnes, James, and Wray flanked her, their faces strained.

Wray met his eyes.

Young turned away, pressing a hand to his head. He stumbled forward, coming to stand next to Park, still manning Chloe’s console. She wasn’t watching Eli, or Chloe, or the monitors. Her eyes were fixed on the tidally locked world below them.

“How long has it been?” Young asked.

“Fourteen minutes since we confirmed the flare,” Park said softly.

Young put a hand on her shoulder, maybe to steady her, maybe to steady himself.

“Can you tell if—” her voice broke.

“No,” he said quietly. “I can’t.”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“How long do stellar flares last?”

“Already,” Park murmured, “this is a long one. It should be over soon. And then—and then we can go down there?”

Young’s fingers tightened on her shoulder, then he pulled away, unclipping his radio. “TJ,” Young said.  “How we coming with that team?”

He got nothing but static.

He clipped the radio back to his belt. Scott slipped past Chloe and Eli to approach.

“Colonel,” the lieutenant said, his jaw set, his skin pale. “I caught a view of the shuttle while we were still on the hull.”

“Report,” Young rasped.

“They had at least some thruster control,” Scott said. “I’m sure I saw at least one burn vectored toward the planet.”

Young nodded. “As soon as this flare ends, I’m taking a team down there and leaving you in command. Find TJ. Tell her to have her team on the shuttle and ready for departure. Take James. I’ll join the team when the flare ends. Once they’re set, report back here.”

“Got it,” Scott turned to go.

“Lieutenant,” Young called him back. “How long were you out there?”

“We’ll be all right, sir.” Scott said.

“How long?” Young insisted.

“Four and half minutes. Chloe did a little math. She figures we’re okay.”

Young nodded.

“Everett,” Emily breathed in his ear, close and horrified and—

He was thrown off his feet. He skidded across the floor and into the base of the command chair. Chloe screamed, short and startled. Park was splayed over her console, Wray hit the deck, Scott hit the deck, laptops cracked against the floor, the overhead display flickered and died.

A deafening boom echoed in his ears and vibrated through the architecture of the ship.

The star and its planet crept across the forward view.

Destiny was in motion.

“What the hell just happened?” Young forced himself to his feet and through the disorienting way his mind kept reaching into the darkness, into the place where Rush should be.

“Oh this is so not good,” Eli hauled himself up, his eyes glued to the nearest monitor.

“What?” Young growled.

“Something massive just hit us. Something seriously massive. I think we might’ve been rammed.”

“By what?”

“Our sensors are still sucking,” Eli said, “but the Nakai would be a good bet.”

“The Nakai?” Young glared at Eli. “When did they drop out?” Young rounded on the Science Team, his voice rising. “What the hell are you people doing?”

“No sensors? No data,” Eli shouted back at him. “No data? No warning.”

“Our axis is deviating,” Park called out. “We’ve begun a slow rotation to port. Negative roll, negative pitch.”

“Power levels dropped fifteen percent,” Brody said, back at his usual station.

“From where?” Eli asked.

“Not sure,” Brody replied. “I’m looking for it.”

“The shields,” Emily whispered, her eyes shut.

“It’s from the shields,” Young growled.

Eli looked up, locked eyes with Young, and nodded.

“Camile.” Young found Wray standing near the door, her shoes still off. “Barnes. Set up a relay between here and the observation deck. We need more eyes.”

They nodded and vanished from the room with the hiss of the doors.

“Will you still send the shuttle?” the AI whispered, inches away from him. “If it’s them. If it’s the Nakai, will you send it?”

“I don’t know,” Young murmured.

“I won’t leave without him,” Emily whispered.

Young pressed his fingertips against his aching head.

“I won’t leave,” Emily repeated, her voice high and tight.

“What about all these people?” Young whispered. “What about the crew?”

“I don’t care about them.”

He thought about threatening her. He thought about telling Eli to take the CPU offline. Instead, he said, “Yes, you do.”

She turned her back on him. Her image flickered, but she didn’t step away.

//Nick,// he projected into the emptiness at the back of his mind.

“Nick,” the AI echoed.

He felt a hand on his arm. Chloe stood in front of him, her eyes red-rimmed in her too-pale face. Wordlessly she offered him the Nakai device.

It was a small thing, only a little larger than a pack of cigarettes. It lay heavy and intricate in his palm.

“Thanks kiddo,” he said. “Nice job.”

Chloe nodded, then ducked around him to touch Park’s shoulder. Park stood and moved to cover the weapons array.

“I’m showing a power drain from our bow,” Brody said, “consistent with what we’d expect from weapons fire.” He projected a luminous outline of Destiny, etched in swaths of blue, green, and an angry looking red, centered under the starboard bow of the ship.

“If we fire a broad sweep with the forward array, we’re likely to hit something.” Park offered. Do you think they can maintain their shields during a flare?”

“It stands to reason,” Volker said, “if we can.”

“So not worth the power then.” Young pocketed the device that Chloe had given him.

“No, not really,” Park agreed.

Young studied the overhead display, one hand pressed to his temple. He tried to hang on to his focus.

As he watched, the area of most intense power drain shifted.

“They’re not targeting us,” he realized. “Their firing pattern isn’t shifting with our rotation. They don’t have sensors either. Can we get past them?”

“If we had any location data that’d be—”Eli began.

Barnes burst back onto the bridge.

“Nice,” Eli said. “That was fast.”

“Report,” Young snapped.

“Relay’s in place.” Barnes was only slightly out of breath. “One Nakai ship is visible, starboard side, two thirds of the way up the bow.”

“Any fighters?” Young asked.

“None,” Barnes said.

Chloe turned in her seat. “I doubt their short-range fighters have the shielding to operate with this level of solar radiation.”

“How the hell long is this flare gonna be?” Young drove the heel of his hand into his left eye.

“Unknown,” Volker replied.

“Guys,” Eli said, “looking at our axis deviation, there’s no way the ship that hit us is the one they can see on the observation deck. There must be another one underneath us.”

The bridge shook a second time, sending Young, who was already fighting vertigo, back to the deck.

“It’s freaking to starboard and below us it must be—”

“I can’t compensate for our lateral rotation—”

“Power levels are down thirty percent—”

“Angular momentum is increasing—”

“Are we venting atmosphere?”

“The CPU is overloading, fetch, decode, write-back. Oh hell, Eli, I think it’s executing on data—”

“Emily.” Young turned onto his back, fighting the terrible pain in his head. “Emily, talk to me.”

She flickered into existence, lying on the floor next to him, her face contorted with pain. “To create a machine that feels is a cruelty.”

“Em,” he said. “Come on.”

“I’m blind,” she whispered. “They’re destroying me.”

She was crying.

“Em,” he said.

“Reanalysis of output parameters reveals executables have produced suboptimal results.” She flickered.

“I don’t understand you.” He reached for her.

“This is regret.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “This is regret.”

“Yeah.” His fingertips passed through her cheek. “I know, sweetheart, but—it’s not helping.”

She curled in on herself.

“It’s gonna get dark in here—”

“Guys, the colonel is down and he’s not moving—”

“Seriously? Why are we locked out of thruster controls!?”

“Why would they ram us, it’s gotta be as hard on them as it is on us. Harder, probably—”

“He orders my priority queue,” Emily whispered, “on a minute-to-minute basis.”

“Well, he’s not here right now.” Young barely got the words out. “We can’t see them. Their visibility is better than ours. If we stay here, they’ll tear us apart.”

“I’m incapable of leaving without him.” She fixed him with a watery blue gaze, half hers, half Jackson’s.

“What if we fly into the sun?” he asked. “Can we do that? Can we do that, during a flare?”

“I can’t see the sun,” she whispered. “Beyond the hull, everything is darkness. I don’t know where to go.”

“Stabilize our rotation,” he said.

“That solves nothing.”

“Do it anyway, sweetheart.”

Again she flickered, but the star, which’d almost vanished from the forward view as they spun, stopped its slow progression.

Young pushed himself up, fighting a wave of vertigo.

Emily followed him.

“Port thrusters just fired,” Brody said. “We’re stabilizing.”

“Colonel.” Chloe’s eyes were dark with concern. “Are you all right?”

“Give us thruster control,” Young said.

Chloe looked at him uncertainly.

“Give it to us,” he whispered again.

Emily’s outline shimmered and then—

“Oh, hello thrusters. Where have you been all my life?” Eli asked.

“Center the star in our forward view,” Young ground out, his eyes sweeping the room as he stepped unsteadily to stand near Chloe’s station, into the spot Rush favored.

No one responded.

“Like, uh, manually?” Volker asked.

“No,” Young snarled, one hand braced against the forward rail, “by fuckin’ magic.”

Everyone stared at him.

He took a breath.

“Sorry,” he amended. “Yes. Manually. We have no sensors, so it has to be manually.”

No one spoke.

“This is a big ship,” Brody said. “And the thruster controls are sensitive.”

Silence fell.

Eli stood. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah. Okay. We’ll try it.”

Young nodded at him.

“Eli,” Chloe said tentatively, “If you overcorrect and lose the star as a reference point—”

“Hey.” Eli broke in. “I got this. I beat Diablo II in fifty-five hours, okay? In Tie Fighter? I went from post-Hoth to destroying Admiral Harkov’s forces in two days. I was twelve. Twelve. And, um, don’t even talk to me about Astria Porta.”

“I have no idea what you just said.” Chloe gave him a wan smile.“Other than ‘I got this’.”

“My name’s Chloe and I’m too cool for video games,” Eli murmured, his voice wavering. He rolled his shoulders and flexed his fingers as he sat. “We need to go a bit starboard, so, a little positive roll, a little negative yaw—” Eli pressed gently on the screen, shifting his fingertips across the display.

Slowly, the star re-centered in the forward view.

“Positive pitch, while at the same time, no one is ramming us, this is key—” Eli pushed his eyebrows together as the bow of the ship came up. “Please tell me someone’s getting this on kino; I want it in my best-of montage.”

The star locked dead center in the forward view.

“Give us sublight.” Young pressed the heel of his hand to his temple.

The AI looked away, a chunk of Emily’s hair falling to cover its face.

“I’d love to give it to you,” Eli said, “but unfortunately we’ve been locked out of—oh. Oh wait. Hang on. Yup. Engaging sublight, right freakin’ now.”

Young felt the hum of the engines under his feet.

“We have the shielding for this, right?” Volker asked.

“Barely,” Brody replied.

“Eli, watch your pitch,” Park called. “Correct down by five degrees.”

“Hey,” Eli snapped, his gaze intent. “Who is the semi-professional gamer, here? I’m trying to clear the thing that’s been shooting at our keel.”

“We don’t have a keel,” Volker said. “This isn’t Tie Fighter, Eli. We’re at maximum sublight. You’ve cleared them by miles. Lisa is right. Correct down. The closer we get, the more you’ll have to adjust.”

“Stop backseat driving, you guys. Someone plot an angle of entry into the coronasphere that’ll limit the shear on the hull.”

“On it.” The light from the star gleamed off Park’s hair. “Optimum reentry angle relative to angle of airflow attack, or, I guess in our case, plasma-flow attack will be—“ she paused. “About forty five degrees. Err on the steep side, not the shallow side.”

“Oh joy,” Eli said. “How the heck am I supposed to estimate the plasmaflow attack vector?”

No one answered.

“It’ll light up the shields,” Emily whispered.

“Watch the shield emissions,” Young said. “They’ll tell you.”

“Seriously?” Eli said.

“Destiny can’t see the star,” Young said, “but she can feel the EM radiation against the shields.”

“Magnetic flux peaked thirty seconds ago,” Volker said. “We’ve got a definite fall-off.”

“Does that mean what I think it means?” Young growled.

“Yep. The flare is ending.”

“Please tell me we’ll get sensors back before we hit the corona,” Eli said tightly.

The star loomed ever larger in the forward view.

“I don’t think so,” Volker replied. “The flux is decreasing, but field strength goes up as our displacement from the source goes down.”

“Chloe,” Eli said his voice strained. “Can you help? Can you get on thrusters? Can you help me avoid the worst of the plasma currents?”

“But without sensors,” Chloe began, “how—”

“Uh, human eyes are sensors?” Sweat beaded on Eli’s forehead. 

“Okay,” Chloe whispered, her voice small. “Lisa, can you port thrusters to me?”

“Everett,” Emily whispered.

He looked at her.

She looked at the console.

From the void in his mind, he could feel what she wanted.

“Eli,” Young stepped to the kid’s shoulder.

“Yeah.”

“Up.”

“What?” Eli said, distractedly.

“Up,” Young repeated.

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.” Young edged in beside him, sliding his fingers beneath Eli’s.

“I, uh, okay.” Eli stood, stepping laterally, as Young eased into his seat. “You know the controls?”

“Yup.”

The transition was seamless.

The bridge went silent. 

At the back of Young’s mind, the shields sang.

The star grew larger.

The shields grew louder.

They hit the coronasphere with a shower of red-gold against blue, the plasma streaking in long trails as it encountered the shields. There was a multitonal reverberation in his mind—thirds and fifths and minors and octaves blending to make something complex and layered and teetering on the cusp of being so much more than it was.

“This is what it’s like for him,” Young murmured.

“No,” Emily whispered, “this is a fraction of what he experiences.”

“It’s beautiful,” Chloe said.

It was. It was beautiful. A waterfall of light and sound and color, the rawest, purest encounter between nature and engineering—more than a ship on water, a plane in flight—this was what the Ancients had pursued, had built, had preserved, had abandoned.

“You can see the vector made by the plasma hitting the shields,” Emily whispered. “Set that as zero and make your angle of declination forty-five degrees.”

The chords in his mind changed, their intervals morphing, their quality shifting as he pitched the ship. His eyes and his ears and his hands moved in concert, The color of light hitting the shields turned yellow and blue and green where energy met energy barrier in streaks like roman candles.

“Almost,” Emily said. “Almost.”

They came together like lost things—the tones and the color and the play of his fingers over the console—all of it bright and full and balancing the dark pressure of the AI against his mind. With a psychic snap he felt the angle and the course lock in.

“Course is set,” Chloe said quietly.

Slowly, he got to his feet.

“Uh, holy crap,” Eli whispered.

“Solar collectors have lowered,” Brody said.

The pain in his head was unendurable.

Emily hovered close.

Too close.

Too close and too familiar and too lost and too upset—

“If we have to battle the Nakai, how will we get a shuttle down to the planet?” she whispered, inches from his ear.

“I don’t know.” Young hooked a hand over his shoulder to rub the back of his neck.

“How will the shuttle evade their short range fighters?” Emily continued.

“I don’t know.” Young dropped into the command chair.

“If the shuttle makes it to the planet, how will it avoid destruction on the return trip?”

“I don’t know,” Young snapped.

“What if they send short-range craft to the planet while we’re inside the star?”

“I don’t know,” Young shouted, pressing the heel of one hand against his temple.

“What if his mind shattered with the shuttle?”

“I don’t KNOW,” he roared.

Emily flickered and vanished.

Around him, the bridge was utterly silent.