The morning after their rooftop make out session, Char, Yelia, and the two other Zaytarian’s left their planet aboard Bo’s ship. The ship had a low profile and ended in tapered wings, the better for air to slide around the ship without stunning its speed. As raggedy as it looked, it was a finely-tuned and crafted machine, hobbled together from many other crafts. Bo clearly knew his stuff.

Bo and Gar took up the two seats in the cockpit, leaving Yelia and Char to the bench-like seats near the rear of the ship, where they buckled in for take-off.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Yelia said, feeling a warmth spread on her cheeks. Char smiled.

“I’m not,” he said.

“I just, I got you all going, but then stopped it.”

“It was fun while it lasted. I’m not interested in you because I want to have an orgasm,” Char said. Yelia smiled.

“So you’re interested in me?” she asked.

“Of course, I am,” Char said, and he looked as though he wanted to say more but he thought better of it and just smiled instead. Yelia reached over and took his hand.

“Should be good to unbuckle,” Bo’s voice said over the ships communication system, and Yelia pulled her hand away to undo her harness, while Char did the same. They walked together to the cockpit, peering into the doorway, the view through the thick glass windshield one of black space and twinkling stars.

“How long you thinking it will take to get us there, Bo?” Char asked.

“Well, if we jumped right to the citadel, a few days. I’m wondering if it might be best to jump to the edge of Destune space and go from there. If we appear right next to the citadel, we might set off… something. They’re pretty techno-advanced, as far as a race of dead things go. If we take our time, we might be able to avoid detection and get in and out without them really noticing.”

“And how long will that take?”

“Well, a day to get to the edge of their space, and then a week or so to fly there without jumping.”

“Absolutely not,” Yelia said. “My sister could be dying. Who knows that those assholes are doing to her. We need to hurry.”

“Us dying won’t help anyone,” Gar said, and his face was pained, and Yelia had to remember that he was trying to save someone he loved, the same as her. “I hate it as much as you do, but we need to do this the safe way. Even if that’s the slow way.”

Yelia didn’t like it, but she knew Gar was right.

“Damn,” Yelia said. “Fine. We play it safe.”

Bo nodded and set in the jump coordinates.

“Here we go,” the large Zaytarian said, and then he pressed a button and the stars outside disappeared, everything turning blue and then purple, as the ship began to move faster than light.

It was less than twenty-four hours from take-off when Bo’s auto pilot pulled them out of jump-space. They had slept and bathed and were eating in the small galley when an alarm sounded for three long beeps.

“Everything alright?” Gar asked.

“Just coming out of jump,” Bo said, pushing himself up from the table and taking his bottle of water with him to the cockpit. Gar followed along.

“What’s it looking like?” Gar asked, lowering himself into the co-pilot's chair. They had come out right at the edge of documented Destune territory, but all Gar could see was the black and white of space and stars.

“Quiet, but I’m getting a reading,” Bo said with a frown, looking at a computer monitor that was affixed to the dash before him, right behind and above the flight controls. There were words and numbers there, but Gar had never been the strongest pilot, and he didn’t know much beyond pointing the front where you wanted to go and hold on.

“A ship?” Gar asked.

“I can’t tell. Seems a bit small for a ship. It’s coming closer.”

Gar squint his eyes and leaned forward, trying to see. Bo’s ship; playfully named the Patchwork Lady, hung in space, the engines having been killed, not moving.

“Is that…” Gar asked, pointing, and Bo followed his finger.

“Looks like a… something.”

“Destune?”

It was humanoid in appearance, but Bo shook his head. “No space-suit, but I don’t think so.

Destune could survive in space without suits, unlike most other species Gar had ever heard of.

“It’s a body,” Gar said as the shape drifted closer to them. He was right. It was a Grogloid, a rock-based being with tough skin that had resisted the immense pressure of space. Tough as a Grogloid was, it still needed to breathe, and this poor being had been lost in space somehow.

“There’s his ship,” Bo said, pointing past the body as it came to bump against the viewport of the Patchwork Lady and then drifted up and over the ship.

The Grogloid ship was easy to miss, as it looked more like a comet than a spacecraft, made out of a gray rocky material. But a hole had been blown into the side of the ship, and the Zaytarian’s could see inside it, the machinery sparking.

“Something took them out, and did it fast.” Gar said.

“Right on the edge of their territory,” Bo added. With that, both of the Zaytarian’s leaned forward, their faces inches from the viewport as they scanned the dark space before them, trying to see anything.

“I don’t see them,” Gar said.

“Me neither.”

Gar sighed and looked over to his pilot. “What do we do? Should we jump for it after all? Get in and out before they have a chance to even get to us? If they’re patrolling this heavily….” he let his voice trail off.

Bo sat back in his chair. “I don’t know. I don’t like jumping, there’s so many alarms we can set off doing that, if they have the citadel guarded the way I’m thinking they do. These poor bastards,” Bo said, motioning out towards the floating, half destroyed ship, “we don’t know why they got taken down. They could have been chased back toward the edge here. I say we go dark, and I can go pretty dark in the Patchwork, and I say we make for the citadel.”

Gar thought for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders.

“You’re the pilot,” Gar said, sitting back in his chair.

Bo nodded, and he reached forward and flicked various switches the other way, and typed a command into a keyboard. The lights in the ship went out, the comms went off, and it sent Char scurrying ahead, poking his head into the cockpit.

“Lights went out. No answer when we tried to call you.”

“We’re going dark. Only essentials on from here, the less things we have for them to see us by, the better,” Bo told him.

“Okay,” Char said, turning away from Bo to go and fill Yelia in.

With the ship running on only essentials, basically engine power, artificial gravity, and oxygen, Bo took the flight controls once more and pushed the ship forward. Gar found he was holding his breath as they crossed into Destune space, and he let it out in a long whistling exhale. Bo grinned.

“Nervous?” he asked, his voice low, as if enemies could hear them in space.

“Yes,” Gar said, unable to take his eyes from the ruined ship as they passed it. Closer, they could see other unfortunate Grogloid’s floating near the ship, suffocated in the cold unforgiving grip of space.

“So far so good,” Bo said after ten minutes of cruising. “We’re going to take shift flying, you and I. It’s too many days for me to stay awake, and I trust you. I’ll take first shift, ten standard hours, and then you got six. Just long enough for me to sleep and eat something. You should go sleep.”

Gar nodded and unbuckled from the co-pilot’s chair. He went to the back of the ship. He found Char and Yelia in the galley, sitting at the small circular table.

“We’re in?” Yelia asked, looking at Gar.

“We’re in. I’m going to try to sleep, Bo wants me to fly in shifts with him.”

Char nodded. “I could fly, too,” he said.

“Bo doesn’t want this thing scratched up,” Gar said, making a joke in an attempt to keep a light mood. The ship was a wreck, covered in scratches. Char grinned, a favor to Gar’s weak attempt at lightness, and waved his hand. Gar continued on, into one of two bunk areas, small rooms with two beds, one atop the other, and a shower stall in the corner. He lay on the top bed, having left the lower one to Bo when they had first entered the ship, and closed his eyes.

He tried to sleep, but Sarah kept coming to the forefront of his mind and he was finding it impossible.

“I’m coming,” he said aloud, but just so. “Please be okay.”

Sarah had been on his mind for a week and a half, since he had woken up in the hospital. He had been unable to think of anything else. Sarah, and that was it. He wondered what Henry had planned. Somehow, without really knowing, Gar knew it had been Henry who had taken her. Anyone else would have killed Sarah and Fib outright, but a passing Zaytarian ship had seen an Aeon ship land and the women board. It was Henry.

Gar hadn’t thought about any other possibility. Henry had fallen for Sarah, even as he forced the girl from Earth to love him artificially. If Henry had taken her, it was because he wanted Sarah alive. He couldn’t kill her. He wouldn’t. Now Fib that was another matter. Gar doubted the brave Zaytarian female was alive still. He hoped she was, for Yelia’s sake, but he didn’t believe it. But Sarah, she was alive.

He only worried about the things Henry had been making her do for a week and a half. Mind control. Rape. Maybe it would have been better if he had just killed her outright. Gar lay in bed and tried to sleep, but his mind could only focus on the black thoughts he was coming up with.