After a few minutes of crying, I gathered myself back together and stepped away from Jara, wiping my eyes. She gave me a nod and stood up straight, acknowledging that we were back to a more normal type of interactions.

  “What’s next, ma’am?”

  “You should help the others pack while I see if Isa needs any help.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” she said before jogging off.

  I took a couple deep breaths then headed to the shuttle bay, stopping to wash up briefly. When I arrived, I quickly found Isa hard at work.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “Hand me that wrench,” she responded without looking at me.

  I spent the next couple hours being her gopher while the others came and went with as many supplies as could fit. At some point, everyone except Isa grabbed a nap for at least a few hours, knowing we’d need the rest. I ended up encouraging Ontari to get as much sleep as she could since her performance would literally mean the difference between life and death, or so I hoped. It was possible that our plan was doomed from the start, but I had to hope.

  Eventually, we had everything we could fit loaded into the shuttle, enough food and water for a couple months. Fortunately, the shuttle had a toilet and small water reclamation system, but we’d want to augment that with additional water stores since the tank was fairly small.

  It’d be cramped, but we’d at least have a chance. Thankfully, Ani remembered that we’d need some sort of entertainment to keep us occupied, so we also brought whatever cards and games we could.

  Isa ended up finishing with less than two hours before the storm would hit.

  “Okay, it should work, though I can’t exactly test it. I managed to rig it up to support dual ship-class crystals to power the shields with a toggle to switch which one was active. That way, I can swap out the inactive crystal for a charged one. With some luck, we’ll have enough crystals to last indefinitely, but I’m not confident in that.”

  “Thank you, Isa. You may have saved us all.”

  “Thank me when it works, Pet.”

  “Pet?” I heard Ontari whisper to Ani.

  “Nickname only Isa uses. It has to do with a bet—don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay, people,” I said with a clap. “Let’s get out of this rust bucket and into this smaller rust bucket.”

  The others made various exasperated gestures but filed into the shuttle. Ontari settled into the pilot’s seat while I took the copilot’s seat. The others found other chairs behind us.

  “Make sure to strap in,” I reminded everyone. “This is going to be a bumpy ride.”

  I turned to Ontari. “Ready to leave?” I asked.

  She nodded and grabbed the controls, guiding the ship out the exit and into the void.

  The next hour and change was quiet as I watched the sensors and Ontari flew us away from the Beam of Light. Eventually, though, the storm caught up.

  “Storm hitting in three minutes,” I called out, making sure we were traveling away from the edge of the storm.

  When the time came, things got chaotic. We jerked forward, then to the side as the inertial dampeners failed to keep up with the rapid changes. I did what I could to map the nearby winds, but they changed so quickly it only helped a bit.

  Ontari proved her mettle, though, keeping us moving along with the edge of the storm as our shields progressively dropped.

  When the shields fell to below 10%, I called out to Isa to switch. Within seconds, the shields reported 100% again, but immediately started decreasing.

  Time passed, though I couldn’t spare a thought to check a clock. I did notice the sweat beading on Ontari’s brow, though, and briefly spared a moment to call out to Jara to wipe it for her.

  Eventually, Isa called out, “Last new crystal!” and my worry spiked.

  “How long has it been?” I asked to anyone who could answer.

  It ended up being Ani who answered. “One hour, six minutes!”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. It was long enough that the crystals should last if not indefinitely, a long time. Of course, we had no plan to escape the storm, but at least our shields would last longer than we could mentally.

  “Ontari, start directing us toward the trailing part of the storm!” I called out as I adjusted the courses I plotted.

  “Aye, ma’am,” she replied tersely, through gritted teeth.

  The next few hours were extremely challenging on all of us, Ontari most of all. Even the shuttle wasn’t immune—despite our shields, it was still suffering stress.

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  After six hours of this, Ontari made a mistake. Well, she had made mistakes before, but this one was worse. She shifted us directly into competing winds that wrenched the shuttle, sending us spinning and depleting our shields faster than usual.

  “Shit!” she cried as she righted the shuttle, but we were getting sucked further into the storm.

  “Follow my path!” I called as I quickly plotted a path to get us back to the edge.

  Thankfully, our cooperation worked, and we survived, but I was worried that would affect how long the shields would last.

  “You’re going to need a break soon,” I told her.

  She just grunted in response.

  “Ani!” I called, and she stepped up close. “You may have to pilot for a bit.”

  I didn’t see her face, but based on her tone of voice, I suspected her eyes were wide. “In this?” she asked.

  “Yes. Only for an hour or so to let Ontari take a nap. I’ll guide you as best I can, but I don’t think she can keep this up for much longer.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m Tier 2, she’s Tier 1—I can hold out.”

  “All right,” she said, clearly scared but willing to do what it took for us all to survive.

  “Ontari, swap with Ani—I’m taking over piloting temporarily.

  “But—”

  “Just do it! You need a nap!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said as I swapped control to the copilot’s console. I immediately gained new respect for Ontari’s abilities—it was tough, and I worried for a moment about my plan to have Ani pilot, but there was no other option. I couldn’t navigate and pilot at the same time, not in a storm, and teaching anyone aether navigation would take far too long.

  “Ready, Ani?”

  “Aye, ma’am, taking control.”

  She struggled, that was clear, and I had to be a lot quicker and more accurate in giving her a course, but it worked somehow. Our shields were depleting quicker than before, but I hoped it was still survivable.

  The hour stretched on forever, but eventually, Jara woke Ontari from her nap. She immediately hurried back and took control from Ani.

  “Do you think you can manage for a few minutes without me?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “Maybe, why?”

  “I really need to use the toilet.”

  She chuckled. “Go, but make it quick.”

  Once I took care of that business, I was back in the chair and immediately returned to work.

  Things continued on like that for almost a day. I was barely holding together after being constantly working that long, and I was making increasingly more mistakes. At least Ontari got the occasional nap, but there was no one else to do my job. Not to mention the crystals for the shields which were no longer getting fully charged.

  When I started to think I couldn’t keep going, I noticed something on the scanners, as weak as they were. Less than an hour ahead was a major aether current! I had no clue where it led, but it was a chance!

  “Everyone! Major current up ahead! We’re going to try to ditch the storm there! Ontari, I’m plotting a course to get us fully to the trailing edge. Be ready in about forty minutes to accelerate away. Isa! Can the engines go faster?”

  “They can, but only for maybe fifteen to twenty minutes.”

  “Okay, be ready to max speed when I call for it.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  The next half hour was tense—if we could survive that, we might be able to survive overall. And survive we did. Soon enough, it was time.

  I implemented a new course and cried out, “Now!”

  Everyone jumped into action. Isa increased the power to the engines while Jara watched over the shields. Ontari flew us along the course I continually updated as we attempted to break free from the storm.

  Things were too hectic to have time to worry. Instead, my waning focus surged as I worked frantically to account for the constantly-changing conditions. Then, suddenly, we were free.

  I just sat there, staring at the display as I watched the storm pass behind us.

  “We did it,” I said in a soft voice.

  “What?” asked Ontari.

  “We did it!” I cried, louder. A second later, everyone cheered.

  “Isa, go ahead and drop the engines to 75% power. Ontari, you can hand control over to Ani. I’m going to sleep.”

  I barely stumbled away from the copilot’s seat and into another chair before my adrenaline crashed and everything went dark.

  When I finally awoke, I wiped away the crusties from my eyes and looked around. Ani was currently asleep, while Ontari was piloting. Jara and Isa were whispering to each other, but looked fairly well-rested.

  “Hey,” I said quietly as I approached the pair.

  “Oh, good, you’re finally up,” Jara replied.

  “How long did I sleep?”

  “Twelve hours.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Wow. Well, I feel much better now, though I’m starving.”

  She gestured to the stores of packaged food cramping the space. “Take your pick.”

  I grabbed a meal and warmed it up before digging in. It was predictably mediocre, but at that moment, it was one of the most delicious things I had ever tasted.

  Once I finished, I headed up to the copilot’s seat to check in with Ontari.

  “Hey, how are things looking?”

  “Well, we’re holding together, and we’ve all gotten some rest, but you’re the only one who knows how to navigate.”

  I pulled up the charts and looked over the scanner data. Unfortunately, with the weak shuttle sensors combined with knowing neither how far nor in what directions the storm had moved us, I had no idea where we were.

  “Well, we’re lost, at least until we find our way to the next system.”

  She sighed. “That’s what I figured.”

  “Hey,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You did well.”

  She smirked. “Oh, I know. I saved all your asses.”

  I huffed out a laugh. “That you did. Glad I didn’t have to kill you.”

  Her gaze darkened a bit, as if remembering how we got here. “Yeah, me too.”

  Once Ani woke up, I went over our current situation. Fortunately, everyone took it well, as expected. They were good crew.

  Shuttles were slow, not made for traveling between star systems. The only reason we could keep up with the storm is that they behaved strangely, even for aether. That meant it took us nearly three weeks to reach a system, and by the end of that time, our cramped quarters were really doing a number on our mental health.

  We were snapping at each other more often, there was no privacy, keeping clean was a chore, the food sucked, and sleeping in chairs was uncomfortable. Nevertheless, we kept going, since to do otherwise was to die.

  When we finally reached the system, I began a scan. With the extraordinarily weak scanners on the shuttle, I didn’t get good data, but eventually I was able to get the layout of the system. We would have to travel around at slow speeds in order to get enough data to plot our location, but we could do it.

  As I guided us throughout the system over the next three days, I found an astonishing result.

  “Everyone? You know how I said that planet seemed like it might be habitable?”

  “Yeah, what about it?” Jara replied.

  “Well, if I’m reading this correctly, there’s a station there.”

  “Holy shit!” Ani exclaimed.

  “Yeah, though I’m concerned because I’m not detecting any other ships in the system, though it’s possible they’re just not registering on the shuttle’s weak sensors.”

  “We’re sure this isn’t in imperial space, right?” Jara asked.

  “Definitely not—the data does not match any known system.”

  “We have to investigate,” Isa chimed in.

  “As much as I hate to admit it in this situation, Isa is right,” Jara added. “We can’t survive in this shuttle if we don’t know where we are—it’s too slow. We need to find out if this place has anything that can help us.”

  I sighed. “Agreed. It’ll be dangerous, but dangerous is better than certain death.”

  With that, it was decided, and I plotted a course to the planet, hoping that it would be our salvation rather than our death.