Luminous Void: A Space Opera Adventure by Victor Evans & Melissa McCann

Author:Victor Evans & Melissa McCann [Evans, Victor & McCann, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2023-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

SKYLER

One moment the battered bulk of Luminous Void hung against the glowing red torus of the accretion disk. A blink later, she vanished as if she had never been there. He was on his own.

Skyler inhaled in the quiet serenity of the moment as he began to create a to-do list in his head.

One: get rid of the beacon.

Two: find a way to let LV know where he ended up.

Three: stay alive long enough for LV to find him.

If they were coming back to retrieve him at all.

A blinking red light drew his attention to the console. Blinking red lights never meant anything good. He began fussing with the controls, hoping all his random button pushing would produce the desired result of turning off the warning light. Everything appeared to be normal, but who was he kidding? While he had piloted all different kinds of ships, escape pods, fortunately, were not something he’d had to use often. This one was unnecessarily complicated, especially considering it was on such a dilapidated ship.

He finally gave up and turned his attention back to the first item on his to-do list. He fished the beacon out of his pocket and placed it on the console.

If he could navigate to the luminous gas debris ahead, he could hide within it as he made his way to Xibalba. It was the one place the pirates couldn’t go with their hacked linchpin, at least not without alerting the guild. So he would be relatively safe there until LV returned.

Which would happen.

Probably.

James would vote to come back for him, definitely, and probably Lurayne. Salome was about fifty-fifty. Ramadi was the problem. He would happily sell Skyler to the pirate bastards himself just to get rid of him, and Mwassaa did whatever Ramadi told her to.

But who was he kidding? The chance of his escaping the pirates and making it to Xibalba unscathed was a long shot at best.

He looked around until he saw the acceleration lever. He slid it up, causing the ship to wrench forward, snapping him back into his seat. The pod picked up speed, but the acceleration only lasted a few seconds before leveling out to something only moderately faster than before.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

Skyler slammed his fist on the console. He attempted to transfer power to the engines from the life-support systems, but when he looked up at the holographic display, he spotted the cruiser bearing down on him from behind so fast it looked like it was going to plow right into him.

Company. Skyler tried to veer sharply to the right, but the lifeboat steered like a tub. The pirates were almost at his tail. He would never make it to the cover of the gas cloud now. So much for that plan.

The boat failed to respond to further commands to accelerate, maintaining its languid speed. Skyler heard a pair of booming impacts against the hull of the ship. Looking into the holodisplay, he saw grapples attached to the back of the lifeboat.

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