The Lost (The Maauro Chronicles Book 3) by Edward McKeown

Author:Edward McKeown [McKeown, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: MoonDream Press (Copper Dog Publishing, LLC)
Published: 2017-12-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

My eyes opened slowly and I wondered if I was dead. After a few seconds I thought I might prefer being dead, as it could not feel this bad. My eyes focused and I realized I was in my cabin. I stirred and groaned.

“Wrik! You’re awake,” Maauro’s voice came. A second later her face swam into view above me. I didn’t dare turn my head. I heard her administer some shots and the room began to stabilize. She lifted me carefully into a sitting position and handed me a tall glass of restorative fluid. I was grateful for its lack of taste, as anything more would have made me vomit. We sat together for about twenty seconds while I gathered the energy to ask about our status.

“I think I’d rather have been hit by the Preon star,” I managed.

“I marvel that we were not,” she replied. “As best I can tell we were 1.783 seconds ahead of the front of the wave.”

“Ah, plenty of time,” I said.

“We emerged back in the Voit-Veru System. I shut down the Daitan’s drive before it broke free and shut ours off so it could cool.”

“If Bexlaw jumped in there, then he and everyone with him are dead,” I said. “Isadora was an old freighter. It could never have turned around fast enough. Stardust was built as a courier and we barely made it.”

“True for New Hope as well,” Maauro said. “We know that they landed somewhere and met an alien species that we have not encountered. They clearly did not do so near the Preon star. So we must try the other warp point. Same approach .345187 up the z-axis.”

I looked at her. “We’ve got to be low on fuel and we have damage. I pushed the engines past the stops. There was a spike in the fusion tube.”

“The spike was a faulty sensor,” she said.

“Crap, and I slowed down for it!”

“There was nothing else to be done. I have inspected our tubes and all are sound, though it will move up the date of our next refit. The other repairs have been minor and I have been engaged with those in between nursing you three.”

“How long were we out?”

“You and Olivia, three days. Dusko is still out.”

“Three days!”

“It was not so bad,” she assured. “You have been intermittently aware and able to follow instructions for bathing and food, but none of you seemed to remember awakening each time. Only now are you oriented properly.”

“In the meanwhile, I ordered spares and a full refuel sent out by tanker. It will put a noticeable crimp in Candace’s budget, but there is no help for that. We will leave as well provisioned as when we set out a few days ago.

“Feel free to sleep on,” she said. “The situation is in hand and beyond the minor repairs there is nothing to do until the tanker arrives tomorrow.”

I nodded as she rose off my bed.

“Oh and of course, Dusko was wrong about who ended up cleaning up all the puke on the bridge,” Maauro added.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.