Avalon

CHAPTER 08

NOT LONG AFTER THEY FINISHED THE JUMP, AVALON’S comm beeped with an incoming call from the Citation, which must have just completed its jump. Jeth switched on the video screen to find Dax once again grinning at him.

“There are no ships on the radar right now, so we might be in luck, but give me a ten minute head start to make sure. If I run into any ITA patrols, I’ll get their attention and lead them away from your path. But get in there as quick as you can. You should be undetectable once you pass through the border.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Jeth.

Dax killed the link between the two ships, and then piloted the Citation away from them. Ten minutes later, Jeth followed. It would’ve simplified things if they could’ve made a metaspace jump directly into the Belgrave, but it was impossible due to the unusual energy signature that marked the Belgrave’s border. A ship could jump within the quadrant but not into it.

Keeping an eye on the radar and proximity scans, Jeth set Avalon to autopilot. They arrived at the border without any sign of Dax or the ITA. A good omen, Jeth decided.

“We’re at the border,” he announced over the main comm.

Moments later, everybody congregated on the bridge for the crossing.

“It doesn’t look any different,” Celeste said from the copilot’s chair, which she had commandeered from Lizzie. Celeste seemed calm enough, but she sat unusually rigid for someone normally as languid as a cat.

Behind them at the nav station, Lizzie snorted. “What’d you expect? A big neon skull and bones?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said Shady. “I thought it would look all weird and scary, but it’s just more space.”

“That’s because that’s all it is,” Jeth said. “Just another little bit of space.” It was more pep talk than denial. An odd mixture of excitement and dread churned in Jeth’s belly, all of it infused with the wanderlust vibrating harder than ever inside of him.

As they passed through the energy field, all the lights on the ship dimmed. A moment later, a burst of white noise crackled out of the comm speakers, making everybody jump. For a second Jeth thought he heard voices among the static.

Nobody said anything as the noise died away. Somehow the silence was even more unnerving, all the normal ship sounds louder and weirdly ominous.

Shady was the first to work up the courage to speak, but when he did, his voice was subdued. “So . . . what the hell was that?”

Nobody answered, not even Jeth.

After a moment Shady spoke again in a more normal voice. “Where do we head now, Captain?”

Jeth cringed a little, not thrilled with the new nickname. “Boss” was bad enough.

Lizzie answered for him. “The Donerail’s last known position was alpha-two-six-one, also known as the Specter Sea.”

“Of course it is,” said Flynn, his voice higher-pitched than usual. “Because that’s exactly what you want to a name a place everybody is afraid of. I mean, why couldn’t they have called it the Sea of Puppies or maybe the Sea of Fluffy Kittens?”

“Don’t be such a wuss,” said Lizzie.

“How do we know that’s where the ship was last?” asked Shady.

“We don’t,” said Jeth. “It’s just an estimated location. One of Hammer’s ships was outside the Belgrave when they recorded the distress beacon, but with the dead zone screwing up the signal, they couldn’t triangulate exactly.”

“But why was the Donerail in the Belgrave in the first place?” asked Milton.

Jeth shrugged, wishing they’d found something about this job on the net.

Sitting up from his slumped position, Shady said, “The doc’s got a good point. Why would the Donerail go into this place? I mean, nobody goes in here except for criminals and nutjobs.”

“You mean, like us?” said Flynn.

“Look,” Jeth said, “it doesn’t matter why they came in here. All that matters is that we find the ship and bring her out. Lizzie, get us prepared for a jump to those coordinates.”

She saluted him. “Yes, Captain.”

Five minutes later, Avalon’s metadrive successfully delivered them to the Donerail’s last known position, but, to no one’s surprise, it was empty.

Jeth spent the next hour going over how to run Avalon’s Explorer program. Part nav comp, part radar, the program had been designed years ago by Jeth’s mother. She had calibrated it specifically to handle the Belgrave’s energy fluctuations. Fortunately, the program mostly ran itself. All the crew had to do was keep an eye on the readouts and they’d be able to stay on course and search for the Donerail. Everyone got the hang of it pretty quickly, including Shady. Jeth considered this a small miracle, given his lack of interest in anything that didn’t involve a trigger followed by an explosion.

Of all the crew, Shady was the only one who’d done time in a juvenile detention center. His high score on Hammer’s aptitude test, combined with Jeth’s natural intuition that he would be a good match for the crew, was the only reason he wasn’t still in juvie.

Once he finished the demo on the Explorer program, Jeth went over the search strategy of using the shuttles to fly preprogrammed sweeps over the surrounding area. Then Jeth and Shady took the first shift and each boarded one of the two shuttles that Jeth’s parents had affectionately named Sparky and Flash.

“Make sure you spend as much time checking the readouts as you do playing video games,” Jeth said to Shady through the comm link. Flynn had suggested installing the gaming units in the shuttles a year ago, after multiple fights among the crew about needing more game time on the main unit installed in Avalon’s common room.

“Oh, I will, Captain,” Shady said in a tone that suggested the opposite.

Jeth sighed and hoped for the best. At least the Donerail was too big for Shady not to notice it. He hoped. Jeth switched on autopilot, and Sparky soared away from Avalon.

Less than thirty minutes later another burst of white noise echoed from the comm speakers. Jeth gave a little yelp of fright, almost falling out of his chair. It was one thing for stuff like that to happen on board Avalon, with everybody else around him to lessen the impact, but out here he was completely alone and more prone to panic.

Hands shaking, Jeth reached for the game controller and switched it on, turning up the volume. Anything to make him forget that noise. He was glad he did, as it kept happening at random intervals.

By the end of the four-hour shift, Jeth had almost gotten used to it. Shady reported experiencing the same thing on his shuttle, while the others said it was occurring on Avalon, too.

“We can live with it,” Jeth said, trying to reassure everybody, including himself. “It’s just the weird energy fluxes in this place. No big deal.”

Turned out he was right. By the third day, they’d mostly gotten used to it. The only other strange phenomenon was that they had to keep readjusting the nav equipment’s calibration settings.

“It’s weird,” Lizzie said to Jeth after the sixth time she had to do this. “Almost as if there’s some kind of massive gravity field out there that keeps pulling us toward it.”

Jeth shrugged. “Maybe it’s a black hole.”

Lizzie didn’t offer an opinion. She’d been acting strangely the last two days, oddly withdrawn. She’d turned in early every night and slept in late every morning. Such antisocial behavior was anti-Lizzie, but Jeth chalked it up to the strain of being in the Belgrave and the constant reminder of what had happened to their parents.

On their fifth day in the Belgrave, one of the cooling units broke. It took Flynn half a day to fix it.

By the sixth day, Jeth was starting to worry about their lack of progress. Two weeks wasn’t a lot of time, and they hadn’t found so much as a drifting heat shield, and those fell off ships all the time in normal areas of space. No, for all the Belgrave Quadrant’s reputation of being a spacecraft boneyard, it was turning out to be more of a wasteland, devoid of anything except more space.

Jeth crawled out of bed early on the seventh day, exhausted from a restless night. He’d tossed and turned for hours, his mind obsessing about what would happen if they failed to find the Donerail. Would Hammer let him continue to search beyond two weeks? Or would the deal for Avalon go bust and life return to normal? Jeth didn’t think he could handle more normal. Not after coming so close to the life he wanted rather than the one he was stuck with.

These thoughts continued to cycle through his mind as he walked onto the bridge. To his surprise, Lizze was there, lying on the floor with her head and shoulders hidden beneath the life support station.

“What are you doing, Liz?”

There was a loud bang, followed by the sound of Lizzie groaning. She scooted out from underneath the station and scowled up at him, one hand rubbing her forehead. “Crap, Jeth. You made me jump and hit my head.”

Jeth pressed his lips together, trying not to laugh. It wasn’t funny, really, and yet it still was. “What are you doing under there?”

Lizzie rolled her eyes, but before she could answer Jeth heard a meow.

He gritted his teeth. “Please don’t tell me there’s a cat stuck inside the life support control panel. You know, the thing that makes sure the air we’re breathing doesn’t turn poisonous and kill us in our sleep?”

“He’s not stuck, just playing hard to get. I think.” She scooted back under the station—probably to avoid Jeth’s glower.

A couple of seconds later and after much scratching, meowing, and cursing, Lizzie reemerged with a struggling Viggo in her arms. She set the cat down and it raced off. No doubt to cause havoc somewhere else.

Jeth sighed as he sat on the nearest chair then stared down at his sister. “So why are you up so early?” He didn’t think she was on the bridge merely to rescue the stupid cat.

“Oh, I, um . . .” Lizzie bit her lip and got to her feet. “I couldn’t sleep. I was wandering the ship and heard Viggo crawling around up here.”

Jeth huffed, refraining from saying anything more about the cat, not when he sensed that his sister was distraught over something. “I couldn’t sleep much either.”

Lizzie nodded, shoving both hands into her front pockets.

Jeth could tell she had something on her mind, and so he waited, leaning back in the chair. He knew not to press.

“There’s, uh, something I’ve been wanting to tell you. . . .”

When she didn’t go on, Jeth said, “What is it, Liz?”

“I found something in my cabin a few days ago. It’s—”

She broke off as Avalon’s proximity alarm started to blare. Jeth jumped out of his seat, his heart heading into overdrive. He turned to the front window and froze at the sight of a spaceship only a few meters off, so close it nearly swallowed the entire view.

“What the hell?” He dashed toward the pilot’s chair, switched off the ship’s anchoring system, and then pulled back on the control column. The ship lurched hard enough that Lizzie stumbled, half-falling into the comm station chair. She turned off the proximity alarm as Jeth steered them a safe distance away.

By now, the rest of the crew was piling into the bridge, all of them in various stages of disarray.

“Woah, where did that come from?” said Shady. He had one boot on and the other hanging from his hand.

Wonderment filled Lizzie’s voice. “It just appeared. One second, empty space.” She snapped her fingers. “Next second, that.”

Jeth frowned. It did seem like the ship had just appeared, but then again, neither of them had been paying attention to the front window. Still, the ship had been right on top of them before Avalon’s proximity alarm had gone off. Maybe the sensor is faulty, Jeth told himself.

“Is it the one we’re looking for?” asked Shady.

“I don’t know,” Jeth said. It looked like other Marlins he’d seen, but he didn’t know for sure. “Let’s find out.”

“Already on it,” Celeste said from the copilot’s chair.

Flynn approached the window and pointed out. “Look at that hole.”

Jeth turned his attention the direction Flynn indicated. A large hole marred the ship’s lower bow. It wasn’t the kind of hole you’d expect on a ship that’s been in a firefight or suffered a collision. It wasn’t a ragged, chaotic shape but perfectly symmetrical, like it had been carved with a giant hole punch. The sight of it sent ripples of dread skidding over Jeth’s skin. What had made it? He crossed his arms to keep from shivering.

“It’s the Donerail,” said Celeste, her voice tense. Jeth turned his gaze toward her, bracing for whatever she was about to say next.

“And according to the scan, there are three life signs on board.”

Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed. The ship had been missing for two months, Hammer had said. Well beyond its food and water capacity. It was adrift, dark, and forlorn.

But not dead.