Chapter 44

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There were no holes in space. Despite what some theorists said about it, they didn’t exist. Not the kind you could climb back out of at any rate. Not the kind Dynan wanted and needed. There was nowhere to hide in all this vastness.

The hum of the ship wasn’t the usual steady heartbeat, but a stuttering thing that reminded him how precarious their lives were. Functioning one moment. Not the next. Thrum, thrum ... thrum. There were power fluctuations all over the ship. It was a miracle the sublight engines still worked at all. If they started stuttering like the rest of the ship noises, it would be all over.

In the cacophony of sound, he thought non-existence entirely possible. It was something he no longer sought – relief from the noise of life. The consequence of hope landed a giant weight of fear against him that pressed down against his chest, making his heart labor right along with his ship.

He read the diagnostic again, rubbing his eyes against weariness. The lights were down to their lowest setting, so it was ship night, or maybe they just didn’t work anymore, or maybe it was dawn. He didn’t know. He was too tired to think about what time of day it was.

A noise behind him brought him to his feet.

Marc walked into the hold, falling against the hull before he recovered his balance. He had both hands to his head. His eyes screwed shut and he tripped again. Dynan moved to his side, reaching to grab him before he fell.

“It’s all right,” Dynan said, trying to lead him over to the curved couch on the wall. He needed to sit down. Really, he shouldn’t be up at all.

Marc shoved him off and jerked away from him. He put both fists into Dynan’s chest, stumbling back from him.

“Why did you bring me here?” he yelled, only hardly able to speak above a whisper. He was almost hysterical with rage and confusion. “I can’t be here. I didn’t want to do this! You’re going to turn this ship around—”

“I can’t.”

“You are! Right now! I’m not staying here. I am not staying. My family...”

He staggered a step back and then another when Dynan moved to help him. “I can’t turn around. I’m not going to. I had to bring you. Marc, I had to. There wasn’t a choice. Maralt would have gone back for you and you’d be dead now. Your parents would have been killed. Your brother. Everyone. I couldn’t leave you there.”

He didn’t believe that, but he finally let Dynan take him to the bench. He sank down onto it and leaned over his knees. “Are they all right?”

“They were all right when we left. Maralt followed right after us.”

“But you don’t know for sure,” Marc said quietly and looked up at him. “You don’t.”

It was true. Maralt could have left a battalion behind and Dynan wouldn’t know it. “You need to go back to bed,” he said rather than argue the unknown. “He attacked you in a way that isn’t easy to recover from and it’s too soon for you to be up.”

“I fucking hate you for this,” he whispered.

Dynan ignored that and helped him up.

“This is all your fault. You never should have come to Cadal.”

“Your brother said the same thing,” Dynan said, walking him back to the crew quarters where Ralion and Sheed were still unconscious. Geneal left the doors open between rooms, but she was asleep. Loren was too and Dynan looked in on them on the way by.

“I’m never going to see them again, am I?”

“I don’t know.” Dynan dropped him onto the bed as gently as possible and then made him lie down, forcing the issue without any difficulty. “I hope you will. If we all make it through this, I’ll make sure you do. I promise you. I’ll get you home again.”

He didn’t believe that either, but he didn’t stay conscious long enough to say so.

“You might not believe it,” Dynan said anyway. “But I’m going to try.”

He sat for a time and watched his friends, listening for the inevitable alarm that would tell him some repair had failed or was about to fail. He couldn’t guess any more why it was happening, especially since it never had before. The Destroyer had never been able to find the XR-30 after getting to sublight speed. Not once in the two years since being deployed against them had this happened.

The capacity to analyze anything no longer existed he was so tired. He leaned his head back, thinking he’d sit here between Marc and Ralion for a few moments of respite, close his eyes for however long he was given. The alarms would wake him. He had a comboard that would go off in case the other, remoter sounds didn’t reach him. He just wanted to rest his eyes.

A persistent beep cut through the descending blanket of dark, hitting the last remnants of consciousness with abrupt urgency. Dynan jerked up in the chair. He had to lean on his knees for his vision to clear so he could read what the comboard said about the alarm.

Of course it was one that couldn’t wait. Not that most ship alarms ever could, but every once in a while, some non-critical breakdown would happen that didn’t require his immediate attention.

He pulled in a breath and pushed to his feet. Staggered more like, but once he got there everything stabilized as his vision realigned again. He thought about asking Geneal for something to help keep him awake and alert, but didn’t want to wake her up. The alarm kept on.

“All right,” he said, patting the wall as he aimed for the hold as if talking to the ship would somehow help keep it together, or stop it from dropping out of sublight speed. “Just hold on a minute.”

The ship didn’t listen to that, but it didn’t fall out of sublight either. The console controls, set to run the diagnostics on a continual basis now, suggested that it might not be long. Here was a repair he wasn’t qualified or equipped to manage. It made him think of a time, years ago now, when the Star Destroyer had damaged the ship. Ralion was hurt and Dain had to fix them both. Dynan understood then the level of fatigue his brother had dealt with.

He could hear him, telling him what to do, what tools he would need, and to hurry it up, or the ship would blow.

“I know. All right. I’m going,” Dynan said, aware he was talking to himself, thinking he was talking to Dain. He wondered what kind of illusion it was, but then decided if that voice in his head that sounded so much like his brother would help him, the state of mental deception didn’t matter.

He climbed up into the engine compartment, hauling the tool kit with him, beyond the phase relays to the panel where the damaged regulator was that would kill them all if he didn’t fix it fast enough. He was shaking from that much movement by the time he got there, fighting through exhaustion to focus.

“It isn’t as hard as you think,” he told himself, which was what Dain said about every difficult task he ever faced. “All you need to do is take the panel off the cell regulator and reroute the damaged circuits...Sure. That’s real easy...The alarm makes your heart race, so it feels like you don’t have time to be careful. Just start. One thing after the other...”

“Right, right, right...”

“...I told you to pay attention to Trevan.”

“I know. I promise I’ll pay attention to Trevan next chance I get...”

“...Don’t fall asleep up here.”

“I’m not.”

“You’ll wake up to a really loud, end-of-your-existence noise coming at you.”

“I’m not falling asleep. I’m switching out these dead circuits.”

“Don’t forget to program the new ones, or, you know...boom.”

“Right.”

“You’re doing fine. All the time in the world.”

“I’ve got this. Last one. Programmed. Alarms?” He breathed again. “No alarms. Okay, good. No alarms. I’m just going to close my eyes for a little while...”

“Dynan?”

He jerked awake. The noise from the grate reminded him that he was in the engine compartment. Loren was calling to him through the hatch.

“Geneal says there’s an alarm. Are you all right?”

“Fuck.”

He rolled over, got to his knees, and crawled out.

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Dain pushed himself up wondering for an instant why it felt like the grate of a ship was under his hands and why he could hear the sound of an engine’s hum, but then his vision cleared and he wasn’t on a ship. The floor was stone; covered in dirt and other things.

The door banged open. Maralt stood in it, smiling down at him.

“Good morning, Dain.”

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There are no holes in space. None to hide in. None where it’s safe.

Life onboard a space ship pursued through the void is precarious at best, where the difference between living and dying is measured one instant to the next.

On the run, Dynan Telaerin’s responsibilities increase to the breaking point while he’s the only one capable of flying the ship and making one repair after the other to his almost crippled craft, at the same time as trying to be a husband to his new wife, Loren. Bringing her and Marc Talryn into the terrifying danger that is Dynan’s life, hardens his resolve to protect them at all cost.

Betrayals abound where he least expects it. They come from people he has trusted nearly the whole of his life. The specter of evil haunts every thought and guides every action in the attempt to keep Loren safe. The man who would take her from him and make a terrible vision reality is stalking him...

...driving him ever onward, leading him to the envisioned slaughter. Maralt Adaeryn sees the cruel end of an ancient prophecy and he holds a dreadful secret. There are some things worse than death.

Union is the 5th book of the Guardians of the Word series, and is suitable for mature young adults. The Chronicles are Chosen, Myth, Telepath, Legend, Union, Seer, Adept, and King.