“Shit,” she says, leaning down to punch some things into a terminal, pulling up maps and grids. Even I know that the blinking red square is not a good sign.

The older man takes off at a dead run in response, and March disappears through a sliding door. Not much for talking, that one. Yeah, okay, I understand—action’s imperative. But still, I’ve been in solitary for over a week; I want to know something about the people taking me away. Is that too much to ask?

Shit, it is. Someone’s finally thought to get the freighter bay turrets online, and the hull’s now being hammered. We’ve got to get out of here. Like, ten minutes ago.

Of them all, I have no idea who my pilot is supposed to be. That’s not a good sign. A jumper is supposed to feel instant rapport—how else can I trust him? The Corp offers hundreds of candidates up for evaluation. In its way, the relationship is more important than marriage, more lasting and more vital to my welfare. I had a husband once, but he couldn’t handle coming second to Kai, and he left me, several spins before I actually noticed he was gone.

I’m not ready for a new pilot, not even one hundred percent sure I can do this. I mean, I’m not fried. It’s not that. There comes a point in every jumper’s life where she knows she’s at the limit—next time she jacks into grimspace, she’s not coming back. Navigating those beacons will be the last thing she does, but it’s like being an addict to almost any chem. You know it’s killing you slowly, but you can’t quit, don’t even want to, because the pleasure outweighs your fear of consequences.

And I guess most of us would rather go out in a blaze of glory, burned-out, than to be one of the saddest folks alive, someone who used to own grimspace and knows she can’t anymore. Knows. I haven’t hit that boundary yet myself, but I don’t think I want to retire. I didn’t become a jumper to die old and gray.

But there’s a knot in my stomach, and I feel like I’m waiting in a seedy hostel for a stranger, unfaithful, like all the years with Kai, first friends, then lovers—so much more—meant nothing. My palms feel damp, cold, and I wipe them on my thighs while the ship shakes. Before, it was all exhilaration, pitting myself against phenomenal odds and coming out with my mind intact, guiding my ship and crew safely to our destination. I’m the reason we rule the star lanes, me. Sirantha Jax. Well, me, and folks like me, J-gene carriers. There’s so few of us; we’re treated like Corp royalty.

Until we burn out.

Until we kill our pilots and crew and have to run—

Enough.

“Where the frag is Jemus?” March emerges in fatigues, a black shirt, and a combat jacket, which make him look bigger, meaner but compelling, a fact I resent because I hate how he superimposes himself over Kai’s memory, just standing there. This gear suits him better than formality, strips away all pretense of civility and civilization. Kai was slim and boyish, no matter his age. He was, in fact, three years my senior when he died, but nobody would’ve ever guessed. “And why aren’t you in the nav chair yet?” To me.

“Bad news,” The woman says, looking grim. “The turrets did some damage in the holds and the power coupling—”

March grits his teeth. “If something needs repair, get your ass down there and fix it. What the hell does that have to do with—”

“If you shut your gob, you dickless wonder, I’ll tell you what it has to do with Jemus.” The ship rocks, and I grab on to the safety harnesses that hang like webbing from the cabin ceiling. “We’re screwed, stranded, and no repairs are going to help.” She brings up an image on-screen, clearly from medical, and even I can tell that the guy on the table isn’t getting up. His head’s, well, open.

Please don’t tell me that was my pilot.

“Why me?” I say aloud.

“What the frag was he doing in the holds?” March growls, pacing like a caged animal. We’re losing precious time; the ship’s going to open up like an Old Terra tin can if we keep sitting here.

“He won’t—wouldn’t—fly without his lucky hat. One of the san bots took it to storage because he left it in the lounge the last time we played mah-jongg,” the doc puts in quietly. I hadn’t realized we were on a two-way feed, but it makes sense. He steps away from the body with a heavy sadness that makes me like him instinctively.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” They all look at me as if surprised to learn I have a voice. “Get weapons online, something.”

The young man with the disquieting eyes tells me, “All that would accomplish is a wanton waste of life. I’m Loras.”

Seems like an odd time to be thinking of introductions, but what the hell. “Sirantha Jax.”

To my surprise, the blond woman answers, although she doesn’t say it’s nice to meet me. “Dina, ship’s mechanic, part-time gunner, engineer, whatever needs fixing.” She indicates the vid display with a tilt of her head. “The doc is Saul. And now you know the names of all the people you’ve killed. Maybe.”

“Frag you,” I tell her, without even asking what she means. Frag her for thinking she knows what happened on Matins IV. She wasn’t there. I’m the sole survivor, and even I’m not altogether sure. My dreams tell different stories, day to day. I’m not certain I can trust any of them.

Dina adds to him, though she’s still looking at me, “After the Sargasso, I can’t believe we have her on board. When you heard Svet died in the crash, you said—”

Shit. I’ve run away with people with a grudge, and hell, maybe they have cause. I brace because this woman seems ready to gouge my eyes out.

“Dammit.” The word sounds wrenched from March. Dina and I both turn, on the verge of going after each other, even with the ship about to come down around our ears. “I can do it,” he adds, in the tone of a man who has volunteered to be fed to the giant thing that lives in the volcano. “Let’s go.”

“You’re a pilot?” Dina regards him with puzzlement and dawning hope.

He doesn’t answer her, glaring at me like this is my fault. March—whatever reason he took it up, whatever reason he stopped, he wasn’t a pilot for the thrills, like Kai, no he’s an older archetype, dating all the way back to the conqueror Cortez. It’s not enough to discover new lands, but he has to see the natives bend at the knee, too.

The fact that I have to place my life in his hands makes me sick to my stomach. I’d never have chosen him, not in a thousand years. There’s too much dominance in him, too much that doesn’t care what’s damaged as long as he gets his way. And I think he knows my reaction by virtue of my expression or some alchemy that I haven’t pinned down. He doesn’t seem like a typical Psi, but he reads my thoughts too close for comfort.

“Get your ass in the cockpit,” he says. “We came a long fragging way, and we’re not stopping here just because you aren’t sure you like me.”

“Where’s the jumper who got you here?”

Finally, it comes to me, the question that’s been bugging me. Outside the ship he said, Can you jump? Our lives depend on it. Perlas is too deep for any ship to hit without jumping; there isn’t a far cruiser outfitted that can haul the straight space between those two points. People have died trying. So why then does everything hang on me?

Another explosion; shit, we don’t have time for this. The ship won’t hold much longer. Dina hisses, and I wheel on her, instinctively bracing. She really wants to rush me now, I can tell, but instead she just exchanges a laden look with March, who nods. Giving permission?

“It was her last run,” the other woman tells me in a voice sharp and hard as the surface of Ielos, a winter world on the rim.

Last run.

March knows the moment I parse that. Their jumper understood that it was suicide—that she’d never make it out of grimspace intact, not this time. Thus gambling their fate on getting me on board, getting me in the nav chair. When did I become someone worth dying for?

This changes everything. They sacrificed their jumper to get me out of here, so we’re going. I’ll jump. She died for me. Intellectually, I know someone on this crew put her down, like an Old Terra horse whose wind’s been broken. Too great a heart, body can’t contain it. It’s a kindness most don’t have the guts to perform.

“What was her name?” I need to know.

“Edaine.” It’s the woman who answers me, once again.

I can see in her eyes that she’s grieving. That’s why she hates me. It isn’t personal so much as the fact that Edaine died for me, and Dina wasn’t ready to let her go. Whether they were lovers or the mechanic simply loved her, it’s not my business. But I can respect loss. Understand it. This ship isn’t ready for a new jumper any more than I’m ready for a new pilot. Something flickers in my brain pan, part of my classical Old Terra education, long since discarded for the thrill of grimspace.

He must needs go that the devil drives.

Yeah, that. Sod what we want. We’ve got to play the hand we’re dealt. Not so long ago, I could call my soul my own. Clean. Contracted to the Corp, sure, but I didn’t owe any karmic debts. But now I’ve got Kai and the rest of the crew weighing on me. Plus seventy-five souls who relied on me to transport them safely to their destination, among them the beloved Miriam Jocasta, freely elected Conglomerate representative to all the tier worlds. Now add to that body count this unknown jumper, the pilot in Med Bay, and I’m feeling like a brick. I don’t say another word, just head for the cockpit.

It’s time.

CHAPTER 4

Try to describe grimspace for us.

At parties, when everyone’s knocked back a few, there’s always someone who asks me to do that. They don’t seem to understand, it’s like trying to define red for a blind man. If you’re not a jumper, then you’re blind to the most extraordinary, primordial colors. And nothing I say will help you understand.

The name’s misleading. Grimspace means inexorable, implacable. Not to be appeased. You see, grimspace will have its due from all who traverse it. But it’s beautiful there, or we wouldn’t be drawn back, time and again, driven on by a jones stronger than anything mankind could devise. Jumpers burn out smiling for a reason.

My pretty, poisonous mistress, I’m coming back.

New ship. New pilot. Same old Sirantha Jax.

I settle into the nav chair and run my hands over the interface, checking the port to make sure it’s clean. Knowing that my predecessor fried right where I’m sitting, well, talk about cold chills. I focus on procedure, not the fact that the ship’s being bombarded. I’ve never jumped under these circumstances, but I can do this. I can. Just be cool, Jax.

It occurs to me as I’m setting up, ready to jack into the nav system, that it’s got to be terrifying for a pilot, working with a new jumper for the first time. And who knows how long it’s been for March? Meanwhile we’ve got people shooting, and I’m supposed to be his eyes, and he acts as my hands. For the duration of a jump, we’re literally twined together via wetware, and even if I knew how, I couldn’t fly the ship while I’m tracking grimspace, finding beacons the old ones left along the star lanes, so long ago that we’ve given up trying to date it. In trying to figure out FTL travel, someone, a long fragging time ago, discovered a better way.