No, make that five other people, because Kali, too, has vanished.
“What the fuck is happening?” Ian demands, whirling around.
I can see the moment he realizes Kali is gone, because his jaw goes tense and his eyes practically pop out of his head. “Kali!” he yells. “Kali, where the fuck are you?”
“I’m right here?” she answers from the general vicinity of where she’d been sitting. “Why are you freaking out?”
“What. The. Fuck?” Max says, and his eyes are pretty wide, too. All of ours are.
Because this is the most bizarre thing I think any of us have ever experienced.
The ships in front of us must be panicking, too, because they decide to bug out. Is it because they think we’ve disappeared? Or because they see five people just floating in space like it’s the most natural thing in the world?
Which it isn’t. At all. Not even a little bit.
“Are we going to go after them?” Rain asks. “Or just let them go?”
“You say that like you think I’ve got any control over what’s happening here right now. And I absolutely don’t.” I’m trying not to let that fact freak me out to the millionth degree.
Before I can say anything else, the Starlight shimmies beneath us. And then shoots a giant solar flare straight at the three ships. It’s like the ones she used on Askkandia and Glacea, except it’s a lot longer, a lot wider, and I’m guessing a lot stronger, because it vaporizes all three of the catamarans.
One second, they’re there. The next, they’re gone. Just like that.
“Holy. Shit.” Max sounds almost reverent.
Before anyone else can say something, the Starlight shimmies again. And the most truly bizarre stealth mode ever created turns off and everything goes back to how it was. She’s still damaged—something we’ll definitely need to deal with once Gage wakes up—but it seems like she’s still operational.
“Kali!” Ian turns around, frantic, only to find Kali sitting right where she’s been since this little adventure started.
She looks as weirded out as the rest of us felt. “What was that?”
“Are you all right?” Ian asks, throwing off his harness and bounding across the bridge to her under all of our watchful eyes.
As he rips her out of her seat and wraps her up in a hug that has her feet dangling off the floor, it pretty much proves what all of us but Kali and Ian have suspected all along—that the captain has fallen head over heels for the princess.
Since the thought makes me want to throw up a little in my mouth, I look back at the controls in front of me. And, with the Starlight’s permission, set a course straight for the Wilds, plan or no plan.
Chapter 56
Ian
“Are you all right?” I demand as I lower Kali’s feet back to the ground and reluctantly let her go.
“I’m fine,” she assures me, but she looks a little pale.
Rain moves to hug her next. “Are you sure, Kali? You disappeared!”
“Disappeared how?” she asks, sounding mystified. “I was here the whole time.”
“Yeah, well, we sure as shit couldn’t see you. We were all just sitting there in space, no ship, no helmets, no nothing. Scariest moments of my life, and that’s saying something.” Max wraps an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t ever do that again, okay?”
“I’d say okay if I knew what it is I supposedly did,” she assures him. “But at least we’re safe, right?”
“For now,” I say grimly. “But I’m damn sure going to—”
I break off as Gage groans. “Why does my head feel like it’s the size of a narthompalus?”
“There’s so much to tell you!” Rain says, and she sounds almost excited. That makes one of us. “Come on. Let’s go down to the sick bay and get you looked at. I’ll fill you in on everything that happened.”
Gage lifts his brows. “We’re not under attack anymore. Does that mean the Starlight finally got it together?”
“The Starlight did something,” I tell him with a clap on the back. “Not sure it was getting it together. But we’re definitely going to figure it out.”
Because there is no fucking way I’m going through that again. Not just the attack I couldn’t fight off, but watching Kali disappear like that? I may never be the same again.
“Well, I say we celebrate,” Max tells the room at large.
“Celebrate the fact that we nearly died?” Merrick growls as he finally unfastens his restraints and stands up.
“I’m pretty sure he means celebrate the fact that we didn’t,” Kali says with a grin. “And I think that’s a fabulous idea.”
She loops an arm through Max’s and walks him toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go down to the galley and make a feast for the party tonight. Or as big a feast as fishgalen will allow.”
While the others prepare for Kali’s celebration, I settle down with Beckett and an obviously concussed, now medicated Gage and try to figure out what the hell happened back there. But considering none of us have an actual clue, it’s not what I would call a productive meeting. Though we do make a game plan for Gage to start fixing her damage as soon as his head feels better.
Still, when it’s done, we go over every damn millimeter of the Starlight’s controls. The Ancients were an incredibly advanced race—that becomes more obvious with every day we spend on this ship. So you can’t convince me that they just turned everything over to some sentient ship with anger issues and let her have her way. Not when that way was as likely to get them killed as it was to save them.
And since the best we can come up with about Kali’s disappearance is that it had something to do with the chair—it does look different than the others in here, slightly larger and with a lighter gray harness, and I’ve never paid attention to that fact—I do the only thing I can think of to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I rip the damn thing up so it’s unusable. We’re down to seven seats now, but I consider it a fair fucking exchange.
Those minutes when Kali just up and disappeared were some of the scariest of my life. No way am I going to chance that happening again. No fucking way.
“Me too, man. Me too,” Max tells me as I make my way back to the bridge.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He laughs, but there’s not a lot of humor in it. “Tell me something I don’t know.” There’s a pause. “We’re headed toward the Wilds?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think—”
“We’ll find her,” I tell him, because nothing else is an option. Not now. Not ever. What state we’ll find her in is something else entirely. But at least she’s alive. We can come back from everything else. “You got alcohol?”
Because the not knowing is worse than the knowing, and it’s going to be a long fucking flight to the asteroid belt. For both of us.
“I’m already three shots in.”
“Sounds like a party to me. I’ll be right there.”
Chapter 57
Kali
Ian and the others walk in just as Max and I put the finishing touches on the fishgalen casserole recipe Gage taught me the other day. It’s not the most delicious thing in the world, but compared to eating the things straight from a dehydration packet, it’s pretty damn good. Plus, Max used up the last of the fresh root vegetables and herbs in a roasted side dish that looks amazing. I can’t wait to dig in.