Normal space arrived with a bang.

Literally.

The transition itself ended smoothly, but almost the moment Artemis emerged, an explosion shook the ship. Thomas, who had been waiting for the sensors to reacquire normal space, grabbed the edge of the console as the bridge lurched beneath him. Pain flared through his side and shoulder, but he forced himself upright and moved to the engineering station.

The first reports were confused. A short in the emergency venting system had triggered a cascading failure through part of the transit-drive circuitry. One of the secondary reactors had overloaded and blown before the automatic cutoffs could isolate it. The damage was serious, but not yet catastrophic. The failed unit had been installed less than a year earlier, after an engineer had nearly destroyed its predecessor by bypassing several safeguards during a repair. Under ordinary conditions, the replacement should have survived. Nothing aboard Artemis was operating under ordinary conditions anymore.

Thomas began resetting the affected systems, bringing the automatic recovery routines online and isolating the damaged reactor from the primary power grid. The work took only seconds. Convincing himself that it had succeeded took longer. He moved through the readings twice, watching for hidden spikes, collapsing pressure levels, or anything that suggested the failure was continuing to spread.

When the numbers finally stabilized, he returned to the sensor station. The external arrays had completed their transition recovery and were already providing usable information. Despite the damage below, the tactical display resolved into a clear image of the surrounding space.

A freighter was approaching them. The vessel transmitted no identification, which was not unusual for smugglers or private haulers operating outside regulated routes. More concerning was the deliberate interference surrounding it. The freighter was actively resisting Artemis’s sensors, scattering its emissions and obscuring its internal configuration.

Then the communications indicator began flashing. An incoming transmission.

Thomas stared at it for a moment. Answering might tell him who was aboard the freighter, but it would also reveal that someone on Artemis had regained control of the bridge. He tried to imagine what he would say if he opened the channel and found another group of pirates waiting on the other end.

A shower of sparks erupted from the bridge-door controls before he could decide.

Thomas turned sharply.

Voices came through the headset Phillip had given him. The men outside the bridge were calling for Varna while they tried to force the damaged door panel. One reported that the controls had been destroyed. Another wanted permission to cut through the hatch.

No answer came from Varna. Thomas hoped that was a good sign.

He reached down and took a needle rifle from one of the bodies on the bridge. The weapon’s indicator showed a partial charge and less than half a magazine. It was not much against men wearing magnetic-field generators, but holding it still made him feel better than standing there unarmed.

The engine alarm sounded again. Thomas cursed and returned to the engineering console. Power was climbing rapidly through the main drive, rising as though someone below were deliberately pushing the system toward overload. He began preparing an emergency shutdown, then stopped when he saw where the excess energy was going.

The damaged reactor section was bleeding it away. Whatever had caused the earlier explosion had left part of the containment and ventilation network open. Power continued building through the engines, but the damaged section released it almost as quickly as it accumulated. The solution was ugly, unstable, and nothing an engineer would ever approve in normal operations, but it prevented the drive from reaching the point of implosion.

The engine’s fluctuation made the overload less of an immediate problem.

Thomas withdrew his hand from the shutdown control. Someone was trying to destroy the ship. Someone else had already made that much harder.

He decided not to disturb the imbalance.

The sparks outside the bridge stopped. Thomas raised the rifle and aimed toward the sealed hatch. Several increasingly frantic calls for Varna passed over the channel. When no answer came, footsteps retreated along the corridor.

Thomas kept the weapon trained on the door until he could no longer hear them. Then he lowered it and let out a slow breath.

He wondered whether this was what being lucky felt like—surviving one disaster only to discover that another had arrived while his attention was elsewhere. The communications indicator continued pulsing.

Apparently, not all of his problems intended to walk away.

Next Chapter: XIX