Page 37 of Into The Rift

“They’ll lock you down!” I yelled at him.

“Identify yourselves and return to the dock immediately,” the voice came again. “I repeat, return to the dock or we’ll open fire.”

“No, they won’t,” Niko said, “They don’t have a good fix on us or they would have already latched onto us and opened fire. We just need to make it out a little farther.”

“Don’t do this! Please take me back!”

“Too late for that, princeling.” He began to make evasive moves, dropping immediately to a lower altitude, zigging and zagging and using every tool in his arsenal to give the on-board anti-lock technology time to kick in. Luckily for him, this was the king’s personal striker, and the designers had employed many such safety measures, all designed to help evade capture in case of attack. He put on one last burst of speed, straight up, and we shot out away from Miko’s massive ship and into the stars beyond, away from the reach of the tractor devices, but still obviously in danger. They could launch a ship to come after us or simply send photon torpedoes after us to destroy or disable us. I began to fear they’d do just that and said so.

“No, they won’t. They know by now that you’re on board.”

“They have photon torpedoes.”

“So? They won’t use them.”

“How do you know that?”

“We’re too close to the ship. The waves would bounce back and destroy them too.”

“What? How does a photon torpedo work, anyway?” I asked him, because I was nosy, and because I wanted to know how I might be dying. “I remember one of the tutors that my parents hired to teach me saying that a photon was not a wave—but it was not not a wave either. Which, as you can imagine, made no sense to me at all, like so much of mathematics and science. But maybe they’re not so dangerous after all.”

He answered me right away, though, almost casually, while still concentrating on his maps.

“They’re dangerous enough. They’re warp-capable matter/antimatter weapons. Specifically, deuterium and anti-deuterium are separated by magnetic field sustainers, and the collapse of those fields drives the material together at detonation resulting in the release of energy.” He glanced over at me and grinned. “Did you understand any of that?”

“I did not. But it’s not necessary, I guess. Unless they deploy them, which they might if they don’t actually realize I’m onboard. Or if they do realize it and don’t care because they think I’m aiding and abetting a prisoner to escape.”

“They know. And it’s more likely that they’ll be coming after us. Your grandfather doesn’t want to kill you, Jago. I’ll make as much speed as I can on this header I’m laying in now, though, and this will take us directly into the rift. I don’t think they can catch us in time.”

“How far is it?”

“Not all that far. At the speed we’re going, we should be coming up on it any minute.”

So far there was no sign of anyone chasing us, and if they were trying to hail us, they were out of luck, because he had turned off the audio. It was deadly quiet onboard, with only the soft hum of the engines to break the silence. I was hyperaware of Niko’s every move. He was concentrating on the digital maps in front of him currently, probably busy still finding and bringing up maps.

“Did you forget where it was?” I said, with as much sarcasm as I could muster.

He gave me a brief smile. “All these names are different from the maps I’m used to. Don’t worry. I can figure it out, but it’s taking a little time.”

“Oh gods, look at how black it is ahead.”

There was virtually no illumination in the rift, and I knew the sky would appear completely dark once we were inside, except for a faint illumination of light in the far distance, interrupting the stygian darkness. That illumination would no doubt be Niko’s galaxy, the closest one to us. It was still unimaginably far away, and that was why his people used the wormhole to traverse it. However, it was so dark in the rift that finding the thing was difficult, even with maps that marked its location and I knew none of those were on board because my people had never gone there before that I ever knew about.

“The wormhole inside the rift is a space anomaly that’s like a tunnel, in the simplest of terms, connecting two separate locations.” Niko was saying. “Imagine folding a paper at either end and then putting the ends together. Unlike stargates, the wormholes aren’t permanent. Their connections last only for a short time, usually sixteen to forty-eight hours, and collapse if too much mass passes through them. Don’t worry. We’ll have enough time once we enter.”

“And I should believe you why exactly?”

“Because I’ve done this before.” He glanced over at me. “What are you doing?”

I was superstitiously crossing my fingers, like Blake showed me how to do as a child. It was a little hard to do considering my wrists were tied down to the chair.

“I’m crossing my fingers.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s for luck, and because I’m a little scared. I was trying to h-help you, and I can’t believe you kidnapped me again.”

I guess my voice wobbled a bit—because I couldn’t quite believe all that had happened to me so fast. Not because I was scared of him and of what was going to happen to me.

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