Star Crossed (Harem Station 2)

They are used for stealth missions because they are untraceable. Once you go in, no one who comes after you can follow unless they not only have the same destination coordinates, but the same destination time. And even then, they’d still arrive far into their future.

Time is the tricky part because there’s really no such thing as time. It’s all local. It changes from place to place. Like, if it’s eleven hundred hours here in this ship, and you wanted to know what someone was doing, right now, at eleven hundred hours on Wayward Station, it’s not possible. It’s unknowable. That question makes no sense the way the question, ‘How bright is the sun in Akeelian City when it’s night?’ makes no sense.

The sun is as bright as it is. Period. Doesn’t matter if it’s day or night on a planet.

That eleven hundred hours and this eleven hundred hours have no connection. They are two separate times because they are separated by so much space.

And even if they did know the time Corla was aiming for, they could never get there. They could never meet up with her as she comes out of the node because their present on the near side of the node is Corla’s past on the far side. And Corla’s present on the far side of the node is their future on the near side.

Fucking shit hurts my head.

The point is, it seems pretty safe to shoot someone through a spin node. The odds of anyone catching you on the other side should be zero.

But everyone knows people use spin nodes to escape bad situations so that’s where the bounty hunters wait. If you exit in a warship like the ones Valor’s father commands, you’re all good. No one fucks with you. But if you exit in a cryopod, like our silver girl back there, you’re almost certainly fucked. The hunters pick up the pods as they exit, before the life support can unfreeze the occupants, and they hold them hostage.

And since it’s the future, and text messages can be sent on neutrino waves that transcend space and time, it’s technically possible that Corla has already exited the spin node, been picked up by bounty hunters, a message was sent back to Wayward—because that’s where the pod is registered to. There was no time to secure an unregistered pod—and she could already be on her way back to Wayward through that same spin node as I sit here thinking about it.

My head really fucking hurts.

Suddenly we’re going fast again and the sinking, left-behind feeling is gone.

The lights come on, the ship powers up, the screens all come back to life, and gravity returns.

Draden and Serpint crash to the floor with two loud thuds.

Mother of suns. Who the fuck put me in charge of these sun-fucked kids? I’m going to get them killed before we even arrive at ALCOR Station.

“Holy shit.” Valor laughs as he stumbles over to the heap of suits containing Draden and Serpint. “Are you two OK?”

“You’re dead, Draden!” Serpint screams. “Dead for sure now!”

“No, you’re dead!” Draden yells back. “I shot you before the gravity turned back on!”

Valor shoots me a relieved look as Draden and Serpint both try to untangle their sleeves and pant legs from each other.

“Docking sequence initiated,” Tray says. Like none of this commotion is even happening.

Everyone gets to their feet and goes back to work. Except Serpint and Draden, who just roll around on the floor insisting the other is dead.

“No one’s fucking dead!”

It takes me a moment to realize I’m the one who just yelled that. Serpint and Draden both look up at me from the floor, blinking their eyes on the other side of their helmets.

“Sorry,” I say. “But no one is fucking dead, OK? You’re both still alive and that’s how it’s gonna stay. Now get your little asses up off the goddamned floor and shut the hell up!”

Jimmy glances over his shoulder at me.

But I just point my finger at him and say, “We’re all fucking kids, OK? We’re all just a bunch of kids!”

“Some of us,” Tray says from his station behind me, “are more childish than others, apparently.”

“Fuck you and your stupid leveled-up maturity.” I still don’t know what that means. I just know I don’t like it. “I didn’t ask to be in charge of this shit-show, OK? But I am. So everyone just… do their fucking job!”

I can feel every one of them side-eyeing me, but they don’t say anything in response. Thank the fucking sun for small miracles.

“Now,” I say, tugging on my suit like I need a moment to gather myself. “We’re going to enter this station and do it just like we planned. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Draden says.

There’s a moment of silence and then we all laugh.

Fuck you, Draden, I want to say. But I don’t.