Eura’s hope-filled tone rang out seconds later. “Interference is clearing.”
“The radiation burn is killin’ us,” Jackin said. “If we don’t warp soon, shields are gonna disperse.”
Adequin gripped the armrests of her chair to try and steady the unending vibrations.
“Quin, heat sinks are gonna melt down any second,” Griffith said.
Unblinking, she stared at their speed as it continued to rise.
“Rake—what are you waiting for?” Jackin shouted.
The velocity meter ticked up again. She hovered her hand in front of the command, tightening a fist and digging her nails into her palm as she forced herself to wait.
Then, finally, the velocity hesitated—no longer increasing, but not decreasing either.
“Copilot—” Adequin began just as Griffith punched the snap-warp authorization.
She slammed to engage. A grating roar ripped through the ship, like the echoing wail of a thousand metal girders crumpling in half. Adequin’s thrashing pulse hammered against her eardrums.
All at once the shrieking clamor silenced, the vibrations ceased, and the wash of red light extinguished, returning the cockpit to its normal, dim hue.
Adequin held her breath, eyes unblinking as she fixated on the distressingly static FTL status screen. Convinced the interface must have frozen, she reached out to wake it, but before she could reach it, it flickered, lighting with confirmation of a successful warp acceleration.
Her racing pulse steadied and cool relief flooded through her. They’d accelerated to warp speed—back to Kharon Gate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Cavalon lay on the cool metal floor and tried to concentrate on breathing. Just breathing. In and out. No pain, only oxygen. Only what he needed—air. It was all he could do to focus on it.
It’d been at least fifteen minutes since Snyder and his cronies had grown bored and left. Apparently it wasn’t interesting to beat the shit out of a guy who’d completely given up trying to fight back. Now he could barely move, his weak muscles gelatinized while also managing to feel like they were literally on fire. Threads of sharp pain traced along every nerve, phantom shocks left over from the volatile interfacing.
With a squeak of boots, Cavalon’s eyelids flickered. He squinted at the blinding overhead lights, his head hammering with each relentless pulse of his heart.
Emery leaned over him. Her pale features tightened in a sympathetic grimace.
Emery, who he’d wanted to leave behind to die. Emery, who’d just tried to stick up for him by threatening someone twice her size with a fucking knife.
After confirming he wasn’t dead, she’d left briefly and now returned with a biotool in hand. She poked at the screen and started an internal scan. Each tiny beep the device emitted cut through Cavalon’s throbbing skull like a hot needle.
“How ya feelin’， boss?” she asked.
“Great,” he grumbled. “How’s it look?”
She held the tool up and gave him a stilted grin. “Nothin’s broken…” she said, clearly attempting to sound optimistic, “… too badly. Two cracked ribs on the right side. You want a bone knit?”
“Sure,” he breathed.
Emery loaded the biotool, then opened his vest and unbuttoned his shirt. She injected the cartridge below his sternum, and he grimaced with the lance of pain. He didn’t like shots to start with, but shots directly into swollen, bruised flesh were a special kind of painful.
He remained on the ground for a few minutes while the medicine seeped in. When a thick warmth grew along the bottom of his rib cage, he knew it’d started working, though his entire torso continued to throb with dull, heavy pain. There wasn’t much to be done about the bruising, but at least the bones would heal. Though the worst of the pain was still the residual left from the volatile interfacing. Faint echoes of the harsh, sharp pangs still twitched along the length of his nerves.