The rumbling engines always affected Jude Quincy as they came to life deep within the belly of a Falconer Elite starship. The galaxy above her. The space station runway beneath her. One mean piece of machine controlled manually, by her. It was kind of a high, and kind of a turn on.

She flipped down her vision-control mechanism and her flight path illuminated over her left eye, and she adjusted the steering column positioned between her knees. In the flight school’s test ship, the column’s alignment was loose and bitchy, like Jude’s old Galaxy Geo teacher, but this one was smooth and sleek, brand spanking new. It bucked against her palms as they moved, but she coaxed it forward, the engines whirring.

“Test 75,” Warren, her flight instructor, said from the seat directly behind her. “Requesting takeoff.”

“Approved for takeoff,” the station’s tower responded.

“Thank you, tower.” Warren tapped the back of her seat. “Ready when you are, Jude. Time to show these boys what a woman can do.”

She checked the ship’s control panels and shot a glance into the mirror above her head. Warren grinned back at her, his weathered face creased into smile lines. Jude’s stomach dipped. She didn’t want to let him down. She returned the smile with a nervous one of her own.

Warren was the only instructor in the entire Falconer Elite flight program who hadn’t laughed at her when she walked into class that first morning four years ago. During every tussle, every cruel word, every lewd comment and wayward hand, Warren had been there to keep the Falconer boys in line before she could wreck their faces and get thrown out of the program. The Falconer Elites had been a men’s club until she came along and ruined it.

“Positioning for takeoff,” she said into the slender mic wrapped along her jaw.

“Manual Control Allowed” flashed across her eyepiece. She tightened her grip on the steering column. The ship shuddered beneath her.

Her heart pounded in her ears.

She wiped one palm, and then the other, on her fire-resistant, skin-tight flight suit.

She eased the column forward.

The ship whined as it taxied along the runway.

She sensed rather than saw everyone’s attention on her. People had taken breakfast early to come to the tower and watch her leave for her test. Even her friends had thrown their lot into the betting pool to see if the first woman Falconer could pass the most harrowing pilot exam in all the flight schools across the galaxy. She wondered if her sister had bet against her. Nah, Linnea would have put up a whole month’s worth of pay behind her sister.

She reached the end of the flight deck and glided to a smooth stop. Above her, along the space station’s ceiling, the D4 hangar slowly slid open. She looked up through the ship’s skylight and watched as the deep space frontier revealed itself beyond the edges of the space station’s interior atmospheric force field.

Jude smiled. She couldn’t help it. She’d always loved it here on the Zynthar International Space Station, where—if she became a Falconer Elite—she’d travel to undiscovered parts of the galaxy.

“Test 75 is a go,” Warren said into their comms.

Before she could doubt herself, before she could second-guess her years of vigorous training, she gripped the column and executed a perfect vertical takeoff. The sensitive ship made no complaint as it lifted straight to the hangar door. She stayed in her traffic lane as other ships arrived through the flight deck’s open force field. Behind her, Warren’s approval radiated throughout the tight confines of the ship’s interior.

With her eyes on the expansive space above her, she accelerated upward, sending a gust of air across the flight deck and rocking the stationary ships, and blasted out into space.

The station’s slender spirals disappeared behind her, and she sped into the dark void. The g-force constricted her chest and distorted her vision, but the equalizer installed in the cockpit kept her conscious and in control.

She approached Mars in a matter of minutes. The pressure in her chest grew until it was like an iron fist squeezing her heart flat. She panted for air, her chest pressing against the harness. Her vision dipped. Splotches of white appeared across her vision, blocking out her eye piece’s display of the flight path.

She couldn’t pass out. That would be an automatic fail, and the most embarrassing way for this to end, with Warren piloting her unconscious body back to the station. Probably drooling. She shook her head and blinked rapidly until the bursts of lights in front of her eyes disappeared.

The ship dipped, and turbulence rattled across the wings, shaking both her and Warren in their seats. Behind her, her instructor remained silent.

The ship’s instability and resulting wind shudders would be a mark against her on the test.

The thought alone was enough for her to get her head back in the game. She gritted her teeth and forced deep inhales and long exhales. She’d prepared for this scenario. For panicking.

Get it together, Quincy.

She relaxed her hands on the controls, letting her instincts and training take control. There was no need to panic; she was a pilot. This was what pilots did.

The gravitational pull of a nearby asteroid belt was minimal, but avoiding the debris required quick thinking as she swerved and ducked under rocks larger than the entire station she called home. Zipping through the deadly obstacle course, she was in her element. She excelled out here, surpassing the skills and instincts of her male counterparts in every simulation. Otherwise, she’d have never even gotten a shot at even taking the test, let alone being a Falconer.

And she wasn’t about to fuck it up now.

She raced through the emptiness of space until she could see Jupiter ahead, pushing the ship’s reactor until the monitor beeped, temperature logged as piping hot. The test had been timed so with careful navigation she would pass each planet until she reached the midpoint: the rings of Saturn. Jupiter whipped by, and she adjusted her settings to bring her to Saturn. The planets blurred despite their size as her speed approached maximum velocity. One day, she was sure she could go faster than the upper limit permitted.

The first female Falconer. And the fastest.

As Saturn approached, she slowed to weave through the rings and use the gravity of the planet itself to whip her back toward the station. She pushed the speed recommended for these maneuvers to their upper limit but remained in control. The ship expertly ducked under last wing and flipped back so that she flew in the opposite direction.

She’d executed the pattern perfectly, and a delirious grin already tugged at her mouth, a whoop of victory thick in her throat.

“Well done, Jude!” Warren’s enthusiasm crackled through her comm. He’d likely get reprimanded for the accolade back at the station, but Jude appreciated it.

“Thanks, sir—”

A flash popped port side.

Flinching, Jude turned in the direction of the light before she could stop herself, surprised at the too-bright flash.

“Eyes forward! Don’t let the—”

The gravitational alarms cut off Warren’s shouted warning with their piercing wails. Through her earpiece, Warren continued to yell, but a ripping burst of static obliterated his words.

Jude cursed, the steering column jarring wildly against her white-knuckled grip. The ship shuddered farther port side. The sensors showed no moons or asteroids large enough to affect her navigation, but as she struggled to pull her ship into line, the glimmer gaped wider.

Through the flickering aurora of light, a planet came into view. Green and blue and white with clouds, like Earth before humans stripped it down to near nothing. Was she succumbing to space visions, to g-force-induced hallucinations?

As her comms crackled again, she grabbed the emergency oxygen and strapped it over her nose and mouth. Behind her, Warren did the same. Breathing deeply, she tried to maneuver out of the gravitational pull, the column bucking against her hands. The planet on the other side of the glimmer came in and out of focus as she tried to line back up with her orbit.

A wormhole. The thought whispered through her mind, but that was crazy. Wormholes only existed in theory, not real life. And only astrophysicists believed in them anyway. A theoretical anomaly at best, not something you could freaking see through. But there was no denying the planet on the other side of the glimmer. No denying the pulling tug of the wormhole’s edge.

“Jude!” The comms cleared for a brief second, and Warren’s unsteady voice blasted into her ear. “Watch out! The—”

Static erupted again, and her ship jerked as if something had slammed into the side. Her eyepiece flashed on and off, the flight path dissolving in a rip of static over her vision. She flipped it up, searching the nav command board for anything that might explain what had happened. The ship’s lights dimmed, and for one horrible moment, she thought she heard the reactors falter.

Jude’s heart raced, and she felt light-headed despite the mask over her face. The light surrounded her, up, down, and forward. She’d never make it back out, not with this gravity. But the force pulling at her ship would tear it apart if she stayed close to the edge for too long. Even now, the reactors sputtered, the interior lights dimming.

Through the wormhole, she eyed the planet. It looked like Earth. Green and blue meant there was water. Maybe life. If she could make it there, she would be out of the all-consuming pull of the wormhole.

“Warren, should I—” She glanced up as she spoke. Behind her, Warren slumped forward against his harness, a thick trail of blood dripping from his nose.

She bit off the rest of her question. Now wasn’t the time to ask permission. A real Falconer acted. She had to save them.

Even if it meant crashing onto an alien planet.

She tightened her grip on the column and focused on the distant point of the planet. Before the reactors could drop in power again, she gunned the ship forward with everything it had left. Whining in protest, the ship convulsed around her as it pinwheeled through the wormhole.

The glow around her grew. Everything sparkled white on white until she could no longer see her hands or the flashing warning lights on the ship’s nav panel.

Then everything went black.