Chapter 72

  “Um, the dungeon is exploding,” Pelp said.

  “I see it’s exploding!” Dalexia shouted at him as she weaved through the structure of the disintegrating flagship, trying to avoid detonations the size of nuclear blasts. The starmech shook and rattled around them, its durability dropping under twenty percent. Dalexia hadn’t heard anything from Seventh for a few minutes. There was a good chance he couldn’t reach her through all the radiation being released by the breakup of the alien flagship. At least, that made sense to her.

  “I don’t think you should have broken that thing, Dalexia,” Pelp added.

  “Not much I can do about that now, is there?”

  A purple and green ball of fire blossomed off the starmech’s port side. Dalexia wrenched the mech in the opposite direction, racing away from the expanding light of the explosion. The flames stopped just short of the starmech’s feet, and Dalexia returned to her course out of the flagship, which was just her best guess for the shortest route to empty space. Why did aliens make their starships so big?

  Another explosion went off right next to the mech, consuming its hull before Dalexia could dodge. She managed to navigate out of the inferno, but her armor’s durability dropped another ten percent.

  “How are we still alive?” Pelp asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dalexia said. “But we can’t take another hit like that. Hold on!”

  She activated the starmech’s light speed engines. An alert appeared on one of the cockpit screens.

  Something exploded behind her. Dalexia didn’t have time to dither or figure out which drug Seventh had given her earlier to counteract the effects of light speed.

  “I’ll turn it on for just a second,” she mumbled to herself, and selected Yes.

  Nothing changed inside the starmech’s cockpit. Dalexia and Pelp just shot out of the side of the enemy flagship in the twinkle of a star’s burp. They blew out the side of the ship in an explosion of energy that would have scorched the entire North American Continent of Earth. The starmech’s departure triggered the final detonation within the flagship, permanently scuttling the enormous vessel. It disappeared in a flash of light that quickly became a dark pulse through the space around the black hole. It only manifested to Dalexia as a feeling of grim sadness.

  Dalexia had left the light speed engines on for only a fraction of a second. The very next thing she did after selecting Yes was to switch the engines off. But that still propelled them well clear of the enemy flagship’s dying gasp. She and Pelp floated in dark and empty space, swirling with the gravity of the black hole.

  Emergency alerts popped up all over the cockpit. Power surges ran rampant through the energy systems of the starmech. Oxygen was venting into space. Half the camera screens were blank. Both of the starmech’s legs had fallen off, and it was missing one of its hands.

  “Slather me in dragon bile,” Pelp said, “What just happened?” He pressed his face up against one of the functional camera screens, squinting at empty space. “Where are we?”

  “Outside the dungeon, so to speak,” Dalexia said. “And I think we’re probably dead in the water. Seventh, are you there? Can you hear me?”

  She got no response. Dalexia fiddled with the controls but only succeeded in locking one of the sub-light thrusters in the “on” position and setting the starmech into an endless roll. She couldn’t turn the thruster off.

  “That’s not good,” Dalexia said.

  “I think I feel a little sick,” Pelp said. “Could you make it stop doing that.”

  “Nope.”

  Since Seventh had given her the shot of the mental stimulant drug, Dalexia had known intuitively how to operate the controls of the starmech. Now that the controls weren’t doing much, she fell back on voice commands. Seventh didn’t seem to be responding, so she used the method she had heard sci-fi nerds use when talking to their digital devices.

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  “Computer, how much air is left in the starmech?”

  A chipper synthetic voice responded over speakers in the cockpit. “Oxygen reserves should last fifteen more minutes. The good news is you will experience no carbon dioxide poisoning from excess buildup. The bad news is, that is because all gases currently in the compartment will finish venting into space in that fifteen-minute window.”

  “Who was that?” Pelp asked. “Is that your friend? I didn’t like what he said.”

  “I didn’t like it either,” Dalexia said. “Computer, where is the Expedition 7?”

  “Sensors are malfunctioning,” the chipper voice said. “I cannot determine the Expedition 7’s location.”

  “Is there anything you can fix so I can get the starmech moving again?”

  “Negative. Auto-repair is not functioning.”

  “Could you at least help me plug some of the holes that are leaking air?”

  “There are numerous breaches, all of them microscopic,” the computer said, far too pleased to be delivering a death sentence. “I can pinpoint their location, but emergency sealant was stored in a compartment in the super heavy beneplate armor’s right hip.”

  “Which is gone,” Dalexia growled to herself.

  “Correct.”

  Dalexia could hear the air hissing out of the cockpit. They were running out of time. She needed to think of a way out of this mess. She had felt quite a bit more intelligent after Seventh had given her the mental drug earlier.

  “What about the mental stimulant?” she asked. “Could you give me some more of that drug?”

  “Another injection of tetrapamornokamserponorcluptamide carries a ninety-nine percent chance of triggering a lethal aneurysm which would not be treatable under current circumstances.”

  Dalexia leaned away from the part of the cockpit where the injector had appeared before. “Not that then.”

  Pelp shifted nervously. “Any chance you could let me in on what’s happening?”

  Dalexia let out a long sigh, which was immediately sucked out into space. “Basically, we’re adrift in space with no way to move or fix my robot, and we’re going to run out of oxygen in fifteen minutes.”

  “Thirteen minutes and forty-five seconds,” the computer corrected.

  Dalexia gestured toward the source of the computer’s voice with a you heard him shrug.

  “So basically,” Pelp said, stroking his beard, “this is a dead pocket of darklight and the tunnel shaft collapsed behind us. Is that right?”

  “Sure,” Dalexia said. “Whatever works for you. What is—” She paused, wondering if she should keep talking and continue using up their precious air. But then she remembered all the air was leaving anyway and she might as well use it while it was still there. “What is darklight? Where the hell did you even come from?”

  Pelp looked at her suspiciously. “I shouldn’t tell a human that. You might pass it on to a dragon.”

  “I don’t know any dragons,” Dalexia said. “And I’m pretty confident we’ll both be dead in thirteen minutes anyway.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Pelp said. “Though…”

  He trailed off, leaving Dalexia hanging. “What?”

  “Well, del emeld means I can go without breathing for another hour or so.”

  Dalexia snorted. “Good for you. I guess that means I’ll get to die with company, and you’ll get to die alone. So, before I go, can you at least tell me where you’re from?”

  Pelp twiddled his thumbs for a few seconds and then said, “I suppose, if things are as dire as you say, there’s no need to hold back. I came from the dwarven colony in Gaia Omega.”

  It all came together; Pelp’s height, the pickaxe he used as a weapon, his thick curly beard. He was the perfect picture of a classic fantasy dwarf. Given the sci-fi nature of her circumstances, Dalexia hadn’t even considered that a possibility. She had thought he was just short.

  Had she abandoned her commitment to seeing everything through a fantasy lens too quickly? No, that was too tiresome an exercise. Anyone who held on to that kind of mindset for longer than an hour was an insufferable loon.

  This “Gaia Omega” Pelp had mentioned was a bit more confusing. They were indeed in the Gaia-BH1 star system. Was Gaia Omega one of the planets?

  “What is Gaia Omega?”

  Pelp gave her a sideways look. “You haven’t heard of it? Not even any rumors?”

  Dalexia shook her head. “I’m new to this star system. I’ve only been here—” She paused to look at her wrist, as if checking her non-existent watch. “I have no idea how long I’ve been here.”

  “Gaia Omega is the liminal space between the Seven Worlds of Gaia.”

  “You mean outer space?” Dalexia asked.

  Pelp gave her a questioning look.

  “You know, the interstellar vacuum? Maybe you would call it the inter-astral void. Or, if you’re on a planet, it’s what’s beyond the sky.”

  “Oh no, not the Dragon Ways. This is something else. It doesn’t exist where you can see it except through tears in the darklight. After the purge began, my people escaped into this liminal space, but it isn’t so liminal. There are all kinds of things in Gaia Omega. There are plants and rocks and animals and other useful stuff. Don’t get me wrong, it’s dangerous outside the colony, but that’s why we take precautions, like publicizing everyone to go without breathing just in case they encounter a dead pocket in the darklight.”

  Dalexia was having trouble keeping up. She could apply a lot of what he said to her general understanding of the Gaia-BH1 system, but not all. And she still didn’t know what he meant by publicizing. Did the dwarven colony have a newspaper that followed who was given special power or technology that allowed them to go without breathing?

  “It sounds like there’s a lot to learn about this place,” Dalexia said wistfully, looking through one of the camera screens at the stars. How much time did she have left? Ten minutes? She didn’t want to suffocate to death. She also didn’t want Pelp to watch her suffocate. That would be uncomfortable.

  “Hey, when I start to have trouble breathing, would you mind turning around?” she asked. “It’ll be weird for me if you’re watching while it happens.”

  “Um, sure,” Pelp said, uncertain. “I guess I can do that.”

  “Worry not, Dalexia,” Seventh’s voice rang out through the cockpit. “I am here to extend your life another thirty minutes.”

  Dalexia kept staring at the stars, assuming this was some kind of hallucination. But then something blocked the stars. A floodlight suddenly illuminated the starmech, and she saw the outline of a massive starship in the space just next to them. Dalexia scrambled closer to the camera screen, pressing her forehead to its surface to get a better look.

  “Seventh, is that really you?” she asked.

  “Who’s that?” Pelp said, studying the source of the floodlight. “Are we saved?”

  “Not guaranteed,” Seventh said. “I apologize for the communication blackout. Many of the E7’s systems are down. Prepare to come aboard. I’m scooping you into one of the hangers. Be warned, my control of the ship is limited. There is a twenty percent chance I miss and crash into you.”

  Dalexia laughed. “Those odds don’t actually sound that bad, but I think I would rather have not known about the possibility.”

  The light from the E7 magnified, and, a few seconds later, the interior lights from one of the ship’s many expansive hanger bays surrounded them. The single active thruster that wouldn’t stop thrusting pushed the starmech into the floor and then finally cut off.

  “Please, find your way to the bridge,” Seventh said. “We have little time.”

  Dalexia popped the cockpit and jumped out of the starmech. Right away, she started jogging toward an open door on the far side of the hanger. She didn’t know the layout of the ship, but Seventh would guide her the rest of the way.

  Pelp stumbled out of the cockpit after her, but didn’t immediately follow. He looked around at the hanger and shouted after her, “Is this another dungeon?”

  “No,” Dalexia yelled back. “Now hurry up. I don’t think we’re safe yet.”