Grimspace (Sirantha Jax 1)

Maybe I gave him some sense of it before, but this time, he sees completely, and I know he does: the glory, the colors, and the almost-manifest monsters that writhe along the hull. The Folly plows through liquid fire; the world without is a conflagration of possibility, ideas and dreams barely conceived and waiting to be given form.

But March and yes, it’s the March-me spinning my mind’s eye away from the beacon. He’s doing it, and I didn’t even know this was possible. He’s trying to show me—

Shit. There’s a ship coming up fast behind us. I don’t know whether they stayed with us through the jump or whether we’ve stumbled into a time trail. Regardless, I don’t want it following us into straight space, because it doesn’t seem friendly, and I sense accord from March. We’ve got to get rid of them and fast, before I exhaust my mental energy. We both know some ships make the jump, and for some reason, never come out again, but the March part of me loves a challenge.

Come on, assholes, let’s play.

CHAPTER 25

I know what we’re going to do before he does it.

The spin feels ugly, graceless, and my stomach hurtles into my throat, bounces back as we whip the way we came. Suddenly we’re coming at them hard-forward, and they have to choose, collision or roll. What happens when two ships crash here?

I’m pretty sure I know why we’ve never heard of it happening; no one lives to tell the tale. I taste March’s satisfaction, the pumping adrenaline. Mary, he lives for this, and with his—our?—pleasure pounding through me, I’m not even afraid as the other ship slings sideways out of our path. This is glorious, exhilarating, and I sense his agreement.

Then we make the loop again, going nowhere, over the top, back the way we came, again and again, until I feel dizzy. He’s actually doing it, though I’ve never seen anyone create grimspace ghosts on purpose. Now there are so many copies of Svetlana’s Folly that even I have a hard time telling which vessel’s ours.

This is the longest I’ve ever been jacked into grimspace, and I feel my body shuddering, although I feel strangely detached from its meat. The vista in my mind’s eye expands until I can see farther than I ever have. What would be the horizon beckons, if this place possessed such a thing. It’s not a door but something else and—

No. Jax, no. Find the beacon.

But it’s not that easy. For the first time during a jump I’m aware of fierce physical pain, and the outward tug grows stronger. I’m not sure I can resist it, and what’s more, I don’t want to; I want to see. I want to know. I’ve spent my whole life preparing for this final journey, and maybe through the door-that-isn’t-a-door lie the people I’ve lost. Maybe Kai’s waiting for me with a kiss and a smile.

Don’t you dare leave me, Jax. Don’t you dare.

And then I feel stronger somehow. March wraps himself around me in ways I didn’t know were possible. Everything I am is filled with him. Every cold and shadowed place, he kindles with light, warmth, clutching me tighter, until he’s all I know, and I can’t hear the siren song anymore.

Stay with me. Stay.

The pain returns as I try to focus, seeking the signal that’s always helped me orient in the past, but it feels thready and weak, diluted by my weariness and whatever’s gone wrong inside my flesh.

I think, here.

March responds with sure hands, knowing we have to get me out of here, or I’m going to be lost. As the ship shudders, making the leap back, I’m not sure where the frag we are, certainly a first. And my sole satisfaction is that the bounty hunters who hounded us here don’t seem to know which Folly to follow as our ghosts split in different directions like the scattering of a school of fish.

My hands shake as I unplug, and when I try to open my eyes, it feels like the light is made of knives, stabbing straight in my skull. I touch my face. Find it wet. And my fingers smell of copper. Never known a run this bad.

“Jax…” His voice sounds rough, raw. “You’re close, aren’t you?”

I don’t ask what he means. But for a moment, I can’t speak, can’t do anything but try to stop the steady stream of blood trickling out my nose. Then I hear him moving beside me, and soon there’s a cloth in my hands. I wish I could see his face, but I can’t bear the brightness in my eyes. At this moment I’m beyond empty, remembering the delicious pull and the way he wrapped around me. Now, I have neither; I’m just Jax, alone inside my head in a way I never have been, and it isn’t halfway to enough.

“Maybe,” I answer finally, and then try to drive some of the despair out of my tone. “You said it yourself, I’m pretty old. Had a good run.”

“Bullshit. I just got used to you.”

I want him to lift me up out of this seat, hold me in his lap like he did after the crash. But he’s already nursing one helpless infant, so I stand up blind, finding the open doorway with my fingertips. Before heading for my quarters, I offer a bittersweet smile.

“Haven’t you figured that out yet, March? Sometimes bad things happen for no reason, and there’s nothing you can do about it. How close did I come anyway?”

His muttered curse tells me he hasn’t even thought to find out where we are. “Not the best jump,” he says, after a moment. “But not terrible. We’re about three weeks out.”

Eight days then. I added eight days to our trip, but that’s what it has to be, because I don’t have another jump in me, not for a long fragging time, maybe never. I’ll have to assess what I’ve got left after I rest. The way that I feel, it’s just impossible to tell.

“Do we have the supplies to cover the longer haul?”

He sighs, and I hear him tapping away. And then: “Yeah, but after day seventeen we’re going to be left eating nothing but paste. Hey,” he calls after me. “Have Doc check you out!”

I dismiss that idea with a flick of my fingertips, but as I’m coming out of the cockpit, I collide hard with someone. I feel hands on my upper arms to steady me, but the faint floral scent surprises me; I didn’t realize Dina ever smelled so feminine. “Asshole,” she gripes. “Watch where you’re—oh shit, Jax. Are you…What happened?”

I just shake my head and brush by because I don’t want to talk to her about it. March can tell her anything she needs to know, or anything he feels like she does. Right now, I just want to be left alone.

“No visitors, no exceptions,” I tell the room-bot.

“Acknowledged,” it chirps.

I don’t clean up. Though I’m probably a mess with all the dried blood, I just don’t care, need to crash out on my bunk and close my eyes. Darkness falls fast—this sleep feels heavy and inevitable as my own death.

Yes, I must be dying because I hear Kai’s voice…

“Ground control, this is the Sargasso. I’d like you to double-check the suggested trajectory and coordinates. Our readings don’t agree. That’s going to put us on the ground about one hundred klicks from the landing site and—”

A hiss from the comm system, then an irritated male voice says, “The information you received is correct, Sargasso. Follow procedure. Control out.”

We exchange a look, frowning. Although we’re not jacked in anymore, we share the feeling that something’s wrong. I’ve had that sense since we left Soltai Station, and now that we’re making our approach to Matins IV, the bad mojo doubles. Waiting for clearance in this giant bolt bucket, so different from the fast, elegant ships we usually take out with a minimal four-man crew, we do our own math and come up with coordinates that differ dramatically from what the Corp landing authority has provided.

When I nod in encouragement, Kai presses the call button again. “Ground control, this trajectory is not going to create sufficient drag for a vessel of this size. What you’ve given us is a crash waiting to happen.”

There’s a long, ominous silence, then: “Sargasso, you have seventy-five VIPs on board. Are you refusing to comply?”

Kai looks deeply troubled now, torn between the need to obey the Corp and the fact we’re both certain they’re on the verge of doing something terrible, either from incompetence or some agenda we can’t begin to guess.

“No,” he says slowly, “but—”

“This is your third denial of an approved flight plan. We have no choice but to categorize this as a mutiny attempt and respond accordingly.”

And then they aren’t talking to us anymore. There’s only silence, which is worse.

“Going to autopilot,” the computer announces with seeming delight. “Override codes accepted. Trajectory and coordinates received.”

Oh no. No.

“We can’t survive a hit like this—there’s no way—” I’m scrambling at the terminal now, trying to restore control on our end.

“Siri, what the fuck’re they doing…?”

“Wish I knew, baby.”

Dream-Jax hasn’t registered the full implication yet, but the rest of me knows what’s coming. I want to scream, but this is scripted, so I just watch in puzzlement, part of me still not wanting to believe that the Corp, our benevolent big brother, will let us come to harm, or worse, cause us harm. Kai, he’s terrified, reaching for me as the planet rushes up to meet us. All around me the world dies.

I wake screaming so my throat is raw, and there’s someone pounding on my door, shouting, “Jax! Jax! Captain’s override, dammit, let me in!”

It’s all coming back to me. Unit Psych Newel whispering through my dream therapy, “You wouldn’t accept the Corp flight plan, would you, Jax? You used your own calculations. Just say it. Say it, Jax, and this will all be over. Say it, and I’ll make everything all right.”

Unlike so many other induced nightmares, this one carries a ring of truth. I know what they did to me, now—I just don’t know why. As I’m lying there, bathed in icy sweat, I hear March swearing, muffled murmurs of conversation:

“…been almost three days,” Dina’s voice. “I thought she was dead.” She doesn’t sound heartbroken that I’m not, actually.

“Open up, right now,” March growls, “or I get the cutting torch.”

“No visitors,” the room-bot tells him sweetly. “No exceptions.”

If I didn’t feel like such a pile of shit, I’d find that funny as hell.

CHAPTER 26

So I’m up on Doc’s exam table once again.

I’m starving, but he won’t let me eat until he’s finished with his tests. Not sure what the deal is, I feel fine. What I really want is a big bowl of pasta and a san-shower, not necessarily in that order. But he insists he needs to check me out because it’s not normal for someone to sleep for three days without any sign of dehydration.

I try to tell him it’s happened before, anytime I have a bad run—my body shuts down like that—but he’s not listening. Instead, he’s frowning over images of my brain. “That’s impossible,” he mutters.