The low hum of machinery vibrated beneath her fingertips as Erica approached the sealed doors. A faint tremor ran through the deck, the ship’s pulse steady yet alien. Her heart steadied into a kind of harmonic rhythm in her chest matching that of the odd pulse. She exhaled slowly, steeling herself. Stewart had directed her here, but he hadn’t offered much detail beyond the necessity of checking the ship’s core systems. That alone was enough to make her wary.

  The doors hissed as they slid open, releasing a burst of warm, dry and recycled air tinged with a sharp, metallic tang, it felt like she was breathing in the ship’s very core. A wave of heat brushed against her skin, causing her eyes to squint against the dry hot air.

  Stepping through, her senses reeled at the sheer scale of the space before her. The engine room sprawled through multiple decks, a labyrinth of interwoven pipes and wiring that curled and twisted overhead like the limbs of a massive, alien creature.

  The dim emergency lighting flickered along the walls, casting elongated shadows across catwalks crisscrossing at different levels, some stories above. The distant hiss of steam and the faint hum of unseen machinery filled the silence, a quiet but undeniable sign that something within this vast, mechanical heart still stirred.

  At the center of it all loomed a colossal black sphere, easily the size of a large apartment building. A single band of blue-white light circled its equator, pulsing softly as though it had a heartbeat of its own.

  Every so often, the sphere gave off a low hum that reverberated through the floor, that she could feel through the sole of her feet. Something within her told her that it was the source of the rhythmic pulsing.

  Erica took it all in, struck by sheer the power and size of the ship’s heart.

  “This is the engine core. Enclosed within it are precisely two nanograms of neutrinos extracted from a neutron star’s core. These neutrinos orbit one another at an exceptionally high velocity, and between them lies the singularity seed.”

  Erica shook her head, pulling herself out of her amazement and following the pulsing green line. “Neutron stars have some of the highest gravitational forces in the universe. How were the Avroili able to extract the neutrinos from the neutron star, and how are you able to keep the gravitational field from crushing you?”

  “I lack data on the precise methods used to acquire these materials. However, my singularity seed is safeguarded by multiple layers of alternating gravitational fields, allowing minimal gravitational fluctuations to pass through the core’s shielding.”

  Erica winced and coughed as another twinge irritated her throat. “So, mind telling me why my throat feels like I’ve been wandering the Sahara for the last thousand years?”

  “It seems your body is adapting to the nanites far quicker than previously estimated. What you're feeling, or I suppose tasting, is your body's response to my system's lack of hydrogen. According to reports on the development of other Avatars' connection with their AI counterparts, this physiological response would normally develop half a cycle after the initial nanite dose. If the connection has progressed to this point already, who knows how far the connection will develop 20 or 30 cycles from now.”

  She cringed and rubbed the front of her neck while trying to clear the feeling from her throat. As she slowed from a jog to a walk, a row of very large tanks appeared around a corner.

  The green pulsing line stopped at the base of one tank and traveled up along a ladder next to a large pipe about halfway to the top of the tank to a platform overhead before disappearing from view.

  She coughed, her voice becoming hoarse. “Well, if this is how the other developments go in the future, I’ll have to decline. I feel like I’m drying out from the inside out.”

  Erica reached out and grabbed one of the rungs on the ladder, pulling herself up until she reached the platform. Once her head cleared the bottom of the platform, she saw a large valve connecting the pipe to the tank.

  The green pulsing light disappeared, and a prompt window popped up, showing her the direction to turn the circular handle to close the valve. She climbed the rest of the way onto the platform and grabbed the valve handle before trying to turn it in the direction displayed by the prompt.

  When the handle didn't move, she gritted her teeth, took a deep breath, and leaned into the handle. After a few seconds of no movement, she took another deep breath and pushed the air from her lungs and hissing through her teeth. A wave of heat suddenly washed through her body, and the valve handle began to slowly turn. She continued turning the handle until it stopped, and a prompt popped up.

  -Hydrogen shut off: complete. Reroute emergency supply to engine core? Yes No.-

  She selected Yes and slumped over the valve handle, panting to help rid herself of the excess heat.

  “What was that? Why did my body temperature skyrocket?”

  “It was likely due to your nanites supplying energy to your musculature. The excess heat should disperse in a few moments.”

  Erica plopped down onto the platform, dangling her feet over the edge. Her breathing steadied, but exhaustion still curled at the edges of her awareness. Sweat trickled down from her hairline, slipping along her temple as she gazed down at the dark expanse of the engine room.

  The sheer scale of the engine core was overwhelming, its pulsating blue-white light carving shifting shadows across the cavernous space. The hum of the ship wrapped around her, a rhythmic pulse that should have been comforting—yet only amplified the chaos in her head. The steady vibration beneath her palms grounded her for a moment, until her thoughts drifted, leaving her staring blankly into the void below.

  She swung her feet idly, resting her head on folded arms atop the middle rail. The Steward was off somewhere, doing God only knew what.

  Despite the core’s steady pulse and the rush of fluids and gases through nearby pipes, the space felt eerily quiet. Apart from waking in the med lab and her brief detour through the ship’s bridge, she’d hardly had time to process everything. One crisis after another had left her drained. And for the first time, she wasn’t panicked or in immediate danger—just simply tired. Not the frantic, heart-pounding kind, but something deeper and more familiar.

  She hadn’t cried yet. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. A strange numbness lingered inside her, and she knew it wouldn’t last. Her fingers brushed over the fabric of her suit—the sensation still foreign against her skin.

  “One minute I was on the Horizon, and now… this.” She muttered, trying to keep her voice steady. Her throat tightened as she remembered the flash of light, the sudden vacuum stealing her breath, and Tiffany’s face—frozen in shock—just before everything was ripped away.

  She hadn’t really known the older woman all that well, but they’d struck up a fast friendship on the launch pad before boarding Horizon One. The memory of Tiffany’s easy laughter echoed faintly in her mind, and a prickling heat behind her eyes warned her that tears were coming.

  Erica closed her eyes. “Stop,” she whispered. She couldn’t let the memories take hold. Not yet. But a sob still rose in her chest, heavy and inevitable. “Damn it.”

  She let out a shaky breath, pressing her palms into her eyes, willing herself to push it all down. There had to be something she could do, something she could focus on to keep from spiraling.

  She gripped the railing tighter, Her fingers curled tighter around the railing, nails pressing into her palms. The pulse of the core vibrated through the metal, steady, rhythmic—so unlike the chaos in her own chest. Her breath shuddered, uneven.

  Then, Stewart’s voice chimed in overhead… Pulling her from the spiral of emotion she wasn’t quite ready for.

  “Avatar, your neural patterns suggest rising distress. Would you like assistance in stabilizing your cognitive functions?”

  Another flicker of annoyance sparked as she ground her teeth, shoving her tears down as far as they would go. “No.” Erica snapped, her voice cracking. She bit her cheek and turned away from the orb reminding herself she had to be careful with her words and that he wasn't the source of her distress.

  Wiping at her eyes. “I’ll be fine.”

  A pause stretched between them, slightly longer than usual, as if Stewart were calculating an optimal response.

  “That statement lacks supporting evidence.”

  Erica exhaled sharply, rubbing her temples. “Yeah, well, I don’t have much to give you right now.”

  “Then conserving energy and addressing cognitive distress remains the most efficient course of action. The ship’s stability is linked to yours.”

  She knew it wasn’t fair to expect him to understand, but she couldn’t help herself. Fear and grief mingled until it felt like they’d choke her, and she hated how chaotic her emotions had become.

  “While it is true I lack emotional responses,” the Steward said, “I am equipped to recognize distress patterns. The ship’s efficiency is tied to your ability to function. Pausing to reset your mental state may be…advantageous.”

  Erica rubbed the back of her neck, feeling the tension ache through her muscles. “I’m fine,” she lied, more to herself than to him. “I’ll be fine.” Her voice wavered, but she stood anyway, ignoring the heaviness in her chest. “Just… tell me what the next step is.”

  Stewart’s silence lingered a heartbeat longer than usual. “We must replenish the resource stocks. The hydrogen reserves won’t last much longer.”

  A humorless laugh slipped out of her. “Of course. No time to rest—can’t afford it.”

  Her heart pounded as she reached for the platform ladder, each step requiring more effort than the last. Her hands trembled, so she balled them into fists, willing the shaking to stop.

  Her grip faltered for a split second before she tightened her fingers around the rung. A slow breath. Steady. The trembling in her limbs wasn’t just exhaustion—it was the weight of everything pressing down at once. It dragged at her shoulders, coiled in her ribs, but she refused to let it root her in place. So, she forced herself to move. One step at a time.

  Focus. Just focus on one thing at a time. That’s what Dad used to say. One thing. Just get through this moment, and then the next.

  “You are performing adequately, Avatar. Progress is within acceptable parameters.”

  “Thanks,” she muttered dryly, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead. “Always wanted to be... adequate.”

  But beneath the sarcasm, there was a flicker of determination. She wasn’t fine. She might not be fine for a long time. But there were steps to take, tasks to complete, and somehow, that was enough to keep her moving. One thing at a time.

  Where are we supposed to get enough hydrogen to fill all of these tanks?” Erica asked, eying the gauge that hovered in front of her.

  “Hydrogen is actually quite plentiful in the universe,” the Steward replied. “Nebulae, gas planets, dust clouds—some places are easier than others to collect pure hydrogen.”

  A sudden rumbling shook the pipes overhead. Gas hissed from a nearby vent, and then the noise ceased.

  Erica cast a sidelong glance at the Steward’s floating orb, feeling a faint dryness in her throat recede. “What was that?”

  The orb’s shutter flicked down and then back up. “That was the last of the H?O discovered on a nearby satellite. The resource drone just finished unloading it.”

  “So, do we have enough now?” she asked.

  The orb twisted as if shaking its head. A prompt flashed before Erica, showing the time counter for critical supplies had only gained about two hours. “Unfortunately, no. The amount we collected didn’t make much of a difference to our overall levels.”

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  Erica exhaled. “Anything else close by? I still feel like I’m about to turn to dust, and we have less than a day to replenish resources.”

  “There’s a small dust cloud not far from our location. We can probably reach it on thrusters before the engine core overheats. There’s also a gas giant of nearly pure hydrogen in the next system, but we’ll need the main engines to get there.”

  “If there’s a dust cloud nearby, why even mention the gas giant?”

  “Because the hydrogen in the dust cloud will be contaminated, and filtering it will stress my systems until resources are fully restored. It would only serve as a temporary stopgap. On the other hand, the gas giant contains cleaner hydrogen, and I can collect a larger and cleaner quantity much faster. The downside is that engaging the main engines will produce heat and radiation inside the ship until hydrogen is available for cooling.”

  “Any signs of life out there?” she asked.

  “No. Before I retrieved your comet, the only vessel detected was a distant freighter passing through the outer edge of the nearby system. I’m not aware of any habitable planets or stations nearby.”

  Erica nodded. “Let’s go for the gas giant. The high radiation and temps are a problem, but I can wait in the restoration pool until the ship is habitable again—assuming it doesn’t boil me alive. We can still communicate if you need me.”

  The Steward’s orb bobbed, as if agreeing. “That’s our best course. I’ll send the request to bring the engine core online once you’re submerged.”

  Erica grabbed the sides of the ladder and slid down. She grinned when her feet hit the deck, the suit’s cushioning absorbing the impact. She jogged out of the engine room and back to her quarters. Within minutes, she was at the edge of the softly glowing restoration pool, heart pounding.

  She took a steadying breath and dove in. The connection to the ship’s systems hit gently this time; her body only twitched once as her mind and nanites synced with the Steward. A prompt from the AI requested permission to bring the engines online; she accepted.

  Almost immediately, energy flooded her mind, and everything slowed around her. She watched a new alert pop up, showing rising temperatures and radiation throughout the ship. Yet, the fluid shielding her body blocked most of the heat and radiation. She tried calling up an external camera feed, hoping to see the ship’s movement.

  Instead, her surroundings went black with thousands of pinpoints of distant starlight shone around her. A brilliant flash flared behind her, and the tiny lights seemed to surge forward. She reflexively threw her arms up, before slowly lowering them.

  She was now “standing” in a mental projection of a star system—seven suns danced in a bizarre gravitational ballet, their colors shifting from blue-white to yellow to faint red, all surrounded by a cloud of gas and dust. At the outer edge of that cloud, a tiny blinking speck indicated the ship’s destination.

  Erica swallowed hard. “My therapist is definitely going to need therapy after hearing about this.”

  Her attention snapped to a new warning. The temperature of the fluid around her had climbed another three degrees. She winced.

  “Steward, she thought, her mental voice echoing in the shared link, I need your help with something.

  A harried response came back:

  “I’m busy keeping the core from melting us into a black hole.”

  “If you don’t help me, I’ll be hard-boiled long before we collapse into oblivion.”

  She sensed the AI’s sudden alarm as it registered her dangerously high body temperature.

  “How can I assist?”

  “I’m going to create a vacuum in my quarters and pressurize the corridor. The rush of air should drop the temperature via evaporative cooling.”

  “But it will also strip gas molecules from the restoration fluid. You could start suffocating.”

  “I’ll take suffocation over boiling. I can manage for a bit. If I lose consciousness, cycle in a fresh batch of fluid and watch my oxygen levels.”

  Another urgent prompt appeared: Core temperatures exceeding tolerable limits.

  Erica gave the mental command to depressurize. The feed of her quarters appeared in a small floating window, showing her body floating in the glowing blue bath, temperature displays flashing orange. Soon, the pressure dropped below 0.04 atm, and tiny bubbles formed at the surface of the fluid.

  Her heart pounded. She split her focus to check the navigation window. A small blue dot blinked where the engines would finally disengage.

  When the cabin pressure hit 0.08 atm, the fluid in the restoration pool began to boil—but its temperature also started to drop. Erica let out a shaky breath as the orange warnings disappeared, replaced by a more stable reading.

  Moments later, a new window informed her that the engines had disengaged. She shifted her perspective back to the external sensors. The starfield flared bright again, and a massive, swirling blue-green planet filled her view.

  -Atmospheric entry? Yes, No,-

  After selecting yes, the scene around her went gray. She felt her stomach twist as the ship plunged into dense clouds. Alarms and prompts bombarded her: high pressure warnings, temperature spikes, structural concerns. Through the feed, she saw her unconscious body slam face-first into the transparent panel of the pool.

  “Oh, that’s going to hurt,” she muttered.

  A sharp alarm blared through the connection, cutting through the haze settling over her mind.

  “Core temperatures remain unstable,” Stewart’s voice came through, tinged with something almost—urgent?

  Erica tried to focus, but her thoughts felt sluggish, her limbs distant. The heat was bleeding into her bones now, and her vision blurred with static.

  “Stewart—” she managed, but the words dissolved in her throat as her surroundings flickered.

  An odd cracking noise filled her ears.

  A foreign sensation prickled at the edges of her awareness, a presence pushing through the fog—something deep in the ship responding to her distress.

  “Avatar—” Stewart’s voice cut off abruptly. The sensation spiked, a pressure building at the base of her skull.*

  Then, everything snapped to black.

  A vast silence settled over the system. For a moment, only the distant flicker of stars and the cold hum of the void remained. Then, space twisted.

  The ship broke free from the veil of faster-than-light travel, snapping into realspace with a brief ripple of displaced energy. It wasted no time, its engines adjusting with eerie precision as it shot toward the massive gas giant ahead. The vessel's battered hull seemed to drink in the shifting light of the nearby stars, its dark silhouette slicing through the void with singular intent.

  As the ship plunged toward the turbulent atmosphere, the thick bands of gas churned below, swirling in a chaotic dance of color and violent storms. The moment it breached the upper layers, the ship vanished into the roiling depths, swallowed whole by the planet’s immense clouds.

  On the far side of the seven-star system, another disturbance shattered the stillness.

  One by one, ships began to tear through the fabric of space, dropping into realspace in chaotic bursts of flickering energy.

  One of the smaller frigates, the Grinning Maw, arrived seconds late, its jump drive sputtering as its hull wrenched back into realspace at an awkward angle. Lights flickered along its battered exterior, and for a tense moment, it looked as if the ship might careen into the flank of the Iron Fang. But at the last second, its thrusters kicked in, stabilizing its descent into formation. Unlike the sleek precision of military fleets, these vessels arranged themselves in a ragged formation, their hulls pitted with age, patched with scavenged plating, and adorned with the markings of a dozen different pirate factions. A broken, battered flotilla, stitched together through necessity and greed rather than discipline.

  At the center of the disordered pack, the largest of them all arrived last.

  The Wrath of Varok.

  On the bridge of the Wrath of Varok, Verik Drosk stood with arms folded, his long, reptilian tail curling idly behind him. The bridge was a dim, cluttered space filled with the scent of old machinery and sweat. His crew, a rough mix of seasoned raiders and desperate opportunists, manned their stations with varying degrees of competence.

  'Get me a scan of the system,' Drosk ordered, his voice calm but edged with impatience. 'I don’t want any surprises.'

  Miren Val, his tactical officer, nodded and leaned over the flickering console. The aged machinery sputtered as the sensor suite struggled to pull in clean data. 'Running a full sweep now, Captain. No signs of Citadel patrols so far.'

  Rael Dekk, the brutish enforcer, grunted. 'See? Told you they wouldn’t waste resources patrolling out here. We’re clear.'

  Miren frowned at the console. “Got a faint energy signature near the gas giant. It’s weak—could be debris or a sensor ghost.”

  Rael Dekk let out a snort. “Waste of time. That freighter’s the only real catch out here.”

  Drosk didn’t look away from the tactical display. The freighter was drifting toward their kill zone, just as planned. It was the prize. But loose ends made him uneasy, and he’d learned a long time ago to cover his tail.

  Miren magnified the sensor reading. A faint signature, barely discernible against the planet’s massive energy output, and the stars radiation. It flickered in and out of the display. 'It’s weak, almost ghost-like. Could be debris, or…'

  He turned sharply. 'Send a recon squad. Recon-2, and Corvettes Six, Eight, and Nine—have them do a low pass, but keep their distance. If it’s nothing, we proceed as planned. If it’s something…'

  Miren hesitated. “You really think—?”

  Drosk’s gaze was cold. “I don’t like unknowns.”

  Miren hesitated. “Captain, if this is just stellar debris—”

  Drosk turned, his gaze cold. “Then they’ll have wasted fuel.”

  Miren exhaled. “Copy that. Sending orders now.”

  With a reluctant nod, Miren relayed the orders. The bridge fell into silence for a beat before Rael let out a dry chuckle. 'So what? If they’re hiding, they’re not a threat.'

  Drosk didn’t look away from the sensor readout. 'Or they’re waiting. And that means we find out who they are before they find out about us.'

  He let the thought hang.

  Miren relayed the orders. Outside, the ragtag flotilla adjusted course, shifting into position around the freighter’s expected trajectory, waiting like vultures for it to stumble into their trap. Meanwhile, the corvettes and Recon-2 broke formation, peeling away toward the mysterious signal near the gas giant, their engines burning dim to minimize their sensor footprint.

  Corvette Six’s pilot adjusted course, kicking on the low-power thrusters. “Recon squad moving out. This’ll take ten minutes, tops.”

  Corvette Eight peeled away next, followed by Nine. Their dark hulls skimmed the void as they vectored toward the swirling gas giant.

  Inside the Wrath of Varok, Drosk barely spared them another glance. He had bigger prey in front of him.

  Aboard Corvette Six, the pilot adjusted the course vector, glancing at the weak blip on his screen. "What the hell would anyone be doing near a gas giant?"

  "Desperation or stupidity," replied his co-pilot, scrolling through the scan data. "No one dives into a gas giant unless they're a science vessel, and According to Mir, this thing wasn’t big enough for that."

  "No support ships either," chimed in a voice from Corvette Nine. "If it were a research expedition, there’d be something—shuttles, probes, an escort at least."

  …

  Beneath the crushing storms of the gas giant, Stewart's ship drifted in the roiling depths, its shields barely holding against the relentless atmospheric force. The hull groaned under the strain, reverberating with each shift in pressure. Moving with calculated precision, the vessel adjusted its position in minuscule increments, each maneuver carefully calibrated to avoid detection.

  Inside, Stewart monitored the incoming sensor feeds, cross-referencing their surroundings with the last intact star maps in his database. The dense clouds provided excellent cover, but the gravitational eddies and chaotic jet streams made maneuvering unpredictable. He had accounted for such variables, of course, but the longer they remained here, the greater the risk of hull rupture.

  A priority alert flashed across his internal processes.

  -External Sensor Sweep Detected.-

  Stewart halted all unnecessary system functions, rerouting power to passive scanning. He extended the ship’s sensor range just enough to confirm the source—multiple contacts in low orbit above the gas giant. The signatures matched no known military patrols or scientific expeditions.

  If he had a pulse, it would have accelerated.

  Instead, calculations shifted.

  -Probability of escape: low.-

  -Probability of detection: Rising. And with it, the likelihood of total system failure.-

  -88.4% likelihood of hostile action.-

  -Probability of de-escalation: limited-

  Stewart remained motionless, waiting, processing. If they were scanning for anomalies, they might not detect him through the storm interference. But if they had already detected something... they would investigate.

  Inside the restoration chamber, Erica remained unconscious, her vitals stable but weak. Stewart assessed the situation. Waking her prematurely could induce additional strain, but if evasive action became necessary, he would require her conscious input.

  Through the ship’s damaged sensors, he tracked the approach of several vessels—small, fast-moving. Reconnaissance craft. They were coming to investigate.

  Options: Engage cloaking measures -Unavailable-.

  -Activate defensive protocols.-

  Stewart calculated the odds again. If they detected him now, escape would not be an option.

  Stewart adjusted his calculations. The pirates were the immediate threat. He could not afford distractions.

  A secondary solution was required.

  -Deploying reconnaissance drone.-

  A small, near-invisible probe detached from the ship's hull, its blackened surface vanishing into the thick, swirling gases of the storm. Designed for passive observation, it drifted on controlled thruster bursts, slipping through the turbulence without emitting a detectable energy signature. As it ascended, its optical and infrared sensors calibrated, locking onto the incoming vessels.

  From the depths of the gas giant, Stewart observed them through the drone’s feed. The ships moved with cautious intent—small reconnaissance craft, lightly armed but agile. Their scanning arrays swept the stormy atmosphere, probing for anomalies.

  Stewart’s calculations adjusted. Threat level: Increasing.

  A sudden turbulence rocked the ship, a deep pressure shift sending violent currents surging through the gas giant’s atmosphere. The stabilizers compensated, but the hull groaned in protest. Stewart monitored the strain levels carefully—though built for extreme environments, the ship was still in a state of critical degradation. Another unexpected fluctuation like that, and adjustments would need to be made.

  For now, he watched.

  And waited.

  …

  On the bridge of the Wrath of Varok, Drosk listened to the chatter, his expression unreadable.

  Miren Val’s console flickered, stabilizing just long enough to give a more precise reading. She stiffened, then turned toward Drosk.

  "Captain, the freighter’s nearly in position. Two minutes before it reaches the trap zone."

  Drosk’s sharp gaze didn’t waver. He nodded once. "Good. Bring up the blackout zone—no transmissions in or out once we begin."

  Miren keyed in the command, and a dull hum rippled through the Wrath of Varok’s systems as their jamming field expanded outward. A pulse washed through space, cutting off all long-range signals in the area.

  Drosk turned his attention back to the anomaly, then to the fleet’s lead recon officer. "Commander Talis, I’m handing you the reins. Keep me updated. If it’s debris, we move on. If it’s something else…"

  Talis gave a crisp nod. "Understood, Captain."

  Drosk exhaled slowly, then cut the transmission, severing his link to the recon squad. He shifted his focus to the freighter drifting into their kill zone.

  "All ships—engage."

  With brutal efficiency, the pirate flotilla pounced. Weapons powered up, engines flared, and the void between them and the freighter ignited in streaks of crimson fire as the ambush began.

  …

  Aboard the lead corvette, the pilot of Corvette Eight snorted. "This is a damn waste of time. Even if there was something here, it’d be scrap by now."

  His co-pilot frowned at the sensor display. "Then why do we keep getting intermittent readings?"

  Aboard the lead corvette, the co-pilot yawned. “See? Nothing. Waste of time.”

  The pilot shook his head. “Drosk’s just covering his ass.” He adjusted the scan range, barely paying attention. “Soon as we—”

  The console flickered.

  Something appeared. A sharp energy spike—brief, but unmistakable.

  Aboard Corvette Nine, Commander Talis frowned at his console. A flicker. An anomaly. Nothing that should be there.

  He adjusted the scan parameters. The signal was too faint, like an echo of something that didn’t want to be seen.

  "Anything?" his co-pilot asked.

  Talis hesitated. “Something. But…”

  A sudden flicker. A pulse of energy. Faint, but real. The console in front of the pilot of Corvette Six chirped with a warning.

  He leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "Commander, I’ve got something."

  Wynter: So. Any thoughts so far?

  Erica: -holding an ice pack to her face- What is it with you and my face?

  Wynter: -shrugs- In my opinion its funny. I've done it enough in my life to know.

  Erica: -Hisses as she adjusts the ice pack- If you would stop loosing your glasses you wouldn't have that problem.

  Stewart: -hovering over Erica's shoulder- Please refrain from causing further damage to yourself, Erica. Repairing you is becoming increasingly resource-intensive.

  Erica: -wincing slightly but smiling dryly- I'll try, Stewart, but tell that to gravity and inertia. They seem to have a different agenda.

  Wynter: -Turns too the Audience.- That's it for chapter five, Thank you all for for visiting. Chapter 6 will be out on Wednesday. Take care until then.