I was floating in soft darkness, a gentle bouncing lulling me to rest. Massage. I liked that. A fly buzzed past my ear, screaming. I tried to shoo it away, but my arm felt heavy and cold, and shooing was too much effort.

  The fly didn’t give up, trying to pull me into space.

  “Wake up!” it screamed. “Wake up, you crudmunching voidsucker!”

  I mumbled for it to go away. All I wanted was to rest in my comfortable darkness.

  A wave of cold hit my face, washing down my neck and shoulders. Uncomfortable. I shook, trying to get it off.

  Someone hit me.

  “Wake up!” Hao screamed.

  She was leaning over my pilot’s couch, one hand raised for another slap, an empty, still dripping bottle of ice tea in her other hand. My cheek smarted, my lips tasted of lemon and sugar. The sensor readout was black, the engine readout flashed white, the row of status lights shone red, red, and more red.

  “Crud,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  It came out “was gnon?” but Hao understood.

  “We’re on fire, the hold’s voided, and there’s a crudmunching dragon in the main corridor!”

  Dragon? My mind overloaded, my thoughts twisting in all directions. I felt like I was wrapped in cotton, buried beneath a layer of crushed, frozen glass, thinking furiously, with nothing emerging.

  Deep breath. In through the nose, the air smelling of lemon and scorched polymer, out through the mouth. Again. And again. Building the ice-clarity focus that I could sometimes achieve.

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  Hao swept her hand down, palm open, whooshing toward my hurting cheek.

  I caught her wrist.

  “Crudmuncher!” she yelled, yanking away. “Don’t touch me!”

  I didn’t answer, just let her go and levered myself out of the wet pilot’s couch. The door to the cockpit was locked, an orange warning light blinking on the keypad. I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the holder behind my couch.

  It stuck, my hand slipping along the neck, the safety lever scraping my palm and tearing my skin, sending a jab of pain into my already throbbing head.

  I gave the crud extinguisher a kick, dislodging it, and elbowed the door opener.

  Voidmunching thing wouldn’t budge. I slammed my elbow into the opener, and Hao cursed, screaming at me in an unintelligible language. It sounded like low-fi computer chatter, short crackling pulses of meaningless noise.

  “Open the crudmunching door!” I yelled at her, waving the fire extinguisher in front of her face.

  She bared her teeth and pulled a short, shining knife from a hidden belt sheath I hadn’t suspected she carried.

  For a second, we stared at each other, her face twisted, her skin bunched into crude valleys. With my thumb, I flicked the safety lever from the extinguisher.

  “If you don’t open the voidmunching door,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking, “I will fill your ugly mug with flame-retardant foam.”

  Her knife trembled. I thought she’d come at me, and I’d have to slam her with the extinguisher before she gutted me. I didn’t want to wrestle her for the knife. I’d seen Hao fight, and I wasn’t wearing my mageshield. The warded armor lay in a pile of burnt-out and shattered wards beneath my work table.

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  “Crud,” she said, flipping the knife away from me and fumbling it back into her belt. “Don’t do that again.”

  “I won’t,” I said, wondering what she meant. Another enigma for a later date. “Open the door? Please?”

  “Did you hear about the dragon in the corridor?” Hao asked.

  I lowered the fire extinguisher.

  “If this is a bad joke, I’m going to space you,” I said. “What about the dragon?”

  “It’s loose, and it’s angry,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it keeps showing its teeth and hissing,” she said.

  “The hatchling?”

  Hao rolled her too-blue eyes. “Unless you have another dragon,” she said. “Still want to go out there?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I didn’t have a choice.