These Broken Stars (Starbound #1)(10)

“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. We have experienced difficulty with our hyperspace engines, and the Icarus has suffered substantial damage as a result of the dimensional displacement. We will attempt to keep the ship in hyperspace, but in the meantime, please follow the illuminated strips in the corridors and make your way to your assigned emergency pods immediately.”

The hallway comes to life. It’s clear most of these people wouldn’t know their assigned emergency pod if it bowled up, introduced itself, and offered to tango. I’m firmly in the camp that reads up on all the safety information the moment they get a chance. You develop that attitude after your first this-is-not-a-drill emergency evacuation, and I’ve had more than one.

We military types are all trained to travel with a grab bag. The things you need to take with you if you evacuate, survival gear. None of it is much use out here in deep space, of course, which is the only place you’ll find this ship. She was constructed in orbit. Like a whale, she’d collapse under her own weight if exposed to real gravity. Still, I’m doubling back before I have time to think about it.

I jog up the hallway toward my cabin, fighting my way against the crowd, which is surging along in a panic.

I palm my way into my cabin and unhook the bag from where it’s hanging over the back of the door. It’s a basic hiking pack from my cadet days, designed to fold down small. I hesitate, then grab my jacket as well.

I need to get three hallways along to my right, then take a left and keep going, though with the crowd growing louder and more unstable by the minute, it’s going to take a while. I make it to the first hallway, passing by the doorway that leads out to the observation deck. I glance out sideways through the door.

I know what the view’s meant to be—and it’s not like this. The stars beyond the clear screens blur, then lurch, then come back into focus.

They’re not the long, graceful lines that should be visible in dimensional hyperspace. They’re in focus for a moment, white pinpoints of light, then long blurs again. I’ve never seen a view like this before—it’s as though the Icarus is trying, and failing, to claw her way back into hyperspace. I’m not sure what will happen if she’s torn out prematurely, but I’m pretty sure nothing good.

For a moment something huge and metallic is visible out the corner of the observation window, and then it’s gone. I crane my neck, trying to catch sight of the object again. It’s so massive that it would have its own significant gravitational field, enough to pull the Icarus out of her flight path.

I turn back to work my way through the crowd toward my pod. The press of bodies is too thick, and I duck to the side to slide along the guard railing. On these back passages, the railing is all that stands between us and a nasty drop, all the way down at least a dozen levels. As I turn the corner I collide heavily with someone smaller than me, and I’m instinctively putting my arms out to keep the person from toppling over.

“Excuse me!” says a breathless voice. “Sir, watch where you’re going!”

No. Oh, hell no.

A pair of blue eyes meet mine, flashing shock—then outrage—before she’s shoving me away with all her strength, staggering back against the walkway railing.

I unclench my jaw with an effort. “Good evening, Miss LaRoux.” Drop dead, my tone says.

In spite of everything—the screaming of the crowd, the jostle of bodies, the blaring of the ship’s alarms—I take a moment to savor the shock and dismay on the faces of Miss LaRoux and her companions as they register my sudden reappearance. I’m not expecting the surge of people that comes flooding from a side passage.

They knock me off balance, but the crowd is so dense that I don’t fall. As if I’m caught in a violent river current, it takes me a moment to get my feet onto the solid floor again. I catch a glimpse of Miss LaRoux’s friends as they’re swept down the corridor. One of them is trying to battle the crowd, make her way back toward me, shouting Miss LaRoux’s name and slamming into people right and left. I realize she’s had training—not just another pretty face. A bodyguard? But even she can’t make any headway. The others are already almost out of sight.

I see one of them scream—mouth open, sound drowned out—in the same instant I realize Miss LaRoux’s not with them. I shove my way through to the railing, trying to catch a glimpse of that brilliant red hair.

This panicked crowd is enough to trample the unprepared. With a wall on one side and the balcony railing on the other, they’re channeled wilder and faster every moment, like beasts in a canyon. I see people lifted off their feet, slammed against the wall. She’s not here. I’m about to stop fighting the crowd and follow the current when a cry pierces the chaos.

I shove my way toward the sound. I’m in time to see a flash of green dress and red hair and white face vanish over the railing, as some frantic man twice her size goes barreling down the walkway.

I’m moving before I have time to think. I swing out over the railing, shifting my grip so I can angle my momentum toward the floor below mine, and jump after her.

“So you knew which escape pod was yours?”

“Yes.”

“Did she?”

“Know which was mine?”

“Know her own, Major. Please cooperate.”

“I suppose she did. I don’t know.”