Star Justice #14 - Star Justice by Michael-Scott Earle

Author:Michael-Scott Earle [Earle, Michael-Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: www.michaelscottearle.com
Published: 2021-05-20T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

As soon as Juliette engaged foldingdrive, my head spun like I’d just snorted a liter of aquavit. The whole ship seemed to flip upside down before it flipped right side up again, but then it kept doing the same thing over and over until I clenched my eyes shut against the sudden rush of g-forces. It felt like I was being tossed around, even though my body stayed rooted in the captain’s chair, and I hoped my women, especially my pregnant women, were able to keep their stomachs steady under the pressure.

When Persephone finally stopped flipping back and forth, I loosened my grip on my armrests, cracked my eyes open, and looked around to see how my queens had fared.

The entire bridge was empty.

The tiger-men, the vampire women, my queens, and even Yu were all missing, and the only thing I could hear on board Persephone was the constant hammer of my own heartbeat. This had to mean I was still in the foldingdrive “universe,” and I wondered how much time had already gone by.

I hadn’t fallen unconscious, at least not that I could tell, and even though this seemed unusual, I hoped it meant our trip in foldingdrive would be a quick one. Or maybe we had already finished, and I was just the first one to pop out, but everyone else on board would follow along and start to appear around me soon, too.

I glanced at the terminal screen, but it was completely blank. I tried to lift my fingers to punch a few buttons, but my arm felt like it was made of lead, and no amount of effort could pick it up off the armrest. I wiggled my toes next, but it felt like they were encased in cement.

I stared at the screen like I could make it work just by thinking about it hard enough. When glimmers of light started to appear on the terminal, I thought I might have actually done it, but then the pinpricks of light grew bigger and solidified into the familiar image of three white dots and two larger red dots on either side of them.

The three planets and the two dying red suns of the SAVO home system hovered in their usual formation for a few seconds, and then they began to warp and shift across the screen. They flared to fill the entire screen, dropped back down until they almost disappeared, and then began to spin in a circle until I felt like I was watching a single face constantly shift expressions.

When the spinning circles started to feel like they were going to flip the whole ship upside down again, I clenched my eyes shut to keep my body rooted in place. I focused on the steady beat of my heart, but the more I slowed down my breath, the faster my heart seemed to beat, until my pulse thundered in my ears and throbbed against the inside of my ribcage.

Light flared on the bridge bright enough that I forced my eyes open, but I wasn’t surprised by what I saw.

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