Debatable Space

Flanagan

“Good plan,” says Brandon, snidely.

“It worked,” I snarl.

“We lost our ship!”

“We’ll get another.”

“All our possessions! Our archives, your guitars, my collection of collectable animated superhero bendy toys!”

“It worked! We’re in, aren’t we?”

“In where?”

Brandon has a point. This is a seriously weird place. The Quantum Beacon ship is hollow on the inside. A vast cavernous space. The crew inhabited a thin space that constituted the shell of a huge empty egg. We have defeated the Beacon’s crew, disabled their ’bots, but what have we actually captured? A big shitload of nothing…

“Lena will know,” I say confidently.

“Aye aye Cap’n.”

Lena’s stellar yacht is nowhere to be seen. The flaring of the sun has kickstarted her yacht and sent it out into space armed with so much potential energy it can reach the nearest planetary system in less than fifteen years. She has, in short, escaped. Thanks to me.

“Where,” I ask despairingly, “is the fucking thing that does whatever the fuck this fucking thing does?”