Page 53 of Silver Slayer

Vala’s hands moved across the control array. “All systems nominal.” His voice carried no ceremony, no weight beyond the facts themselves. “Standby for lift.”

"Disruptor field calibrated,” Tyrk added as his claw-tipped fingers danced across the console. “We are as ready as we will ever be.”

“Everyone strapped in?” Vala called into the ship’s comm.

“We are good in med bay,” Mara answered in a strained tone.

“Waiting on you,” Ruze answered from the engine compartment.

“Prepare for launch,” Vala called out just before the engines engaged.

It wasn’t the violent surge I had expected but a deep, gathering resonance that built through the deck plating and into the bones. The ship trembled, not the shudder of instability but the vibration of something powerful finding its purpose, and then we were moving.

The forest fell away beneath us. Through the viewport, the canopy receded in slow, inexorable waves, giving way to glimpses of the forest floor where we had fought and bled and nearly died. The twin suns hung low on the horizon, their light spilling across the treetops in sheets of colors Quin had named gold and amber, and for a moment, the world below us possessed a beauty that the danger had never permitted us to see from the ground.

Quin’s hand tightened in mine. Her eyes were fixed on the viewport ahead, tracking the landscape with the complicated current of her emotions as the place that had nearly killed her revealed itself from above.

The sky darkened as we climbed. What had been clear blue deepened as the anomaly’s gravitational boundary manifested ahead of us, a swirling, sickly storm of distortion, strange colors bleeding into each other like wounds that refused to heal.

“Brace,” Vala said, and the flatness of his tone did nothing to conceal the tension in his shoulders.

The first impact was not sound but sensation, a shudder that traveled through the entire hull like something massive had struck us from below. The deck plating jumped beneathmy boots. Warning alarms erupted in a shrill, overlapping cacophony that drove my ears flat against my head.

Quin’s hand in mine was a vise, her knuckles pale with the force of her grip, and I held on without yielding, without complaint, becoming the anchor she had chosen. If holding onto me eased the fear behind her eyes, she could break every bone in my sword hand, and I would thank her for the privilege.

The ship bucked. A violent lateral lurch that threw everyone against their restraints hard enough to draw a gasp from Kira near the rear bulkhead. Tyrk braced himself at the console, his massive frame absorbing the shock through sheer mass, his hands moving across the controls with a precision that belied the chaos around him.

“Port thrusters, fifteen percent,” Vala called, his voice steady beneath the screaming of the hull. “Reactor load increasing. Junction conduit holding.”

Another impact. Harder this time, from above, driving the deck toward our feet before the artificial gravity compensated. The viewport filled with swirling, sickly colors pulsing to a rhythm that felt almost alive, as though the anomaly itself were trying to swallow us. Warning indicators flashed across every display, and the wisp of Quin’s essence spiked with fear, raw and visceral.

“Propulsion at one-oh-seven percent,” Tyrk called, his voice carrying the strain of a male fighting controls that wanted to tear free of his hands. “Conduit temperatures rising. We’re approaching threshold.”

“Hold it together,” Vala said, his voice remaining remarkably steady as his fingers danced over the controls.

The ship pitched. A violent, corkscrewing motion that lifted one side and drove the other down toward the swirling maelstrom outside. Everyone slid in their restraints, bodies thrown against harnesses that creaked with the strain. Brooke cried out, a short, bitten-off sound, and Lila reached for her across the gap between their seats, their hands clasping in support.

The violence peaked. One final, devastating surge that felt less like turbulence and more like the ship coming apart around us, metalloid screaming, deck plating groaning, the artificial gravity stuttering long enough to lift everyone a handspan from their seats before slamming them back down. The viewport went white. Then blue. Then a corrosive stain that swallowed everything.

And in the silence that followed, I wondered if we failed to leave this world, would Quin spend eternity beside me, or would she still refuse to claim me as hers?

Absolute, perfect silence. The shaking stopped. The alarms cut. The deck plating settled beneath my boots with the stillness of something that has endured beyond its design specifications and found, against all expectation, that it is still whole.

Through the viewports, the swirling chaos of the anomaly receded behind us, diminishing to a distant storm of sick color against the black. And ahead?—

Stars. Clean, brilliant, vast beyond comprehension. Not the distorted pinpricks visible through the anomaly’s veil, but the true deep black of space, salted with light I had learned was so ancient it had been traveling since before either of our species had learned to name the sky.

The ship hung motionless in that perfect void, and for several heartbeats no one spoke. No one moved. We simply existed, suspended between one world and the next, while the universe arranged itself around us with a patience that made our struggles seem very small.

Someone laughed. I could not tell who. The sound broke the silence like glass, edged with somewhere between relief and hysteria, and then others joined. Brooke, then Lila, then Kira’s higher, brighter laugh cutting through the tension until the entire command deck rang with the sound of people who had not expected to survive.

Quin’s grip loosened. Gradually, finger by finger, her hand easing its hold on mine until I could feel the blood returning to compressed tissue. Her fingers remained laced through mine, resting now rather than gripping, and the warmth of her palm against mine carried a tenderness that twisted my hearts into knots.

“Veil clear. Anomaly behind us,” Vala’s voice cut through the laughter. “Ready with the tellic, Ruze.”

“Tellic is ready at your command,” replied the Nomadican’s disembodied voice.

“Course set for Valose,” Tyrk announced.