The Blind Jump

Kaelen Vance refused to accept the universe's terms.

He slipped his arms under Jax, lifting his dying best friend off the floor. With a primal scream of exertion and grief, Kaelen dragged Jax through the partially opened blast doors and into the classified Prototype Hangar.

The hangar was massive and dimly lit, dominated by the sleek, aggressive silhouette of a Blackbird warp-fighter. It was a machine of jagged angles and experimental dark-matter engines, resting on a raised launch platform.

Kaelen hauled Jax up the boarding ramp and dumped him unceremoniously into the co-pilot's seat of the cramped cockpit. Jax groaned, his head lolling to the side, his eyes fluttering shut.

"Stay awake, Jax. That's an order, Captain's orders," Kaelen gritted out, strapping the harness over his friend's bleeding chest.

Kaelen vaulted into the pilot’s seat. The cockpit was a bewildering array of prototype avionics, completely different from the standard Academy fighters. But Kaelen had flown a lot of strange ships in the war that hadn't happened yet. He relied on pure, desperate instinct.

He slammed his hand onto the primary ignition sequence.

The Blackbird screamed to life. The dark-matter engines whined with a terrifying, oscillating frequency that vibrated the fillings in Kaelen's teeth. The hangar bay alarms shifted from a warning siren to an automated evacuation klaxon.

Down on the hangar floor, the blast doors were blown completely open. A dozen heavily armed operatives flooded the room, raising their weapons toward the prototype.

"They're locking on," Kaelen muttered, his fingers flying across the navigational console.

He didn't have time to input coordinates. He didn't have time to calculate a safe trajectory through the planetary gravity well. To initiate a hyperspace jump within an atmosphere, without navigational beacons, was considered absolute suicide. It was a blind jump. You could materialize inside a star, you could be ripped apart by gravitational shear, or you could end up millions of lightyears outside the known galaxy.

But if they stayed, they were dead.

Kaelen reached up and slammed the canopy release. The heavy glass sealed shut, cutting off the sound of the approaching operatives.

Plasma fire began to strike the deflector shields, rocking the sleek fighter on its landing gear.

Kaelen looked over at Jax. His best friend was pale, his breathing so shallow his chest barely moved. The blood was staining the gray uniform black.

"We're going for a ride, buddy," Kaelen whispered, gripping the dual-yoke throttle.

He bypassed the safety interlocks. He ignored the blaring red warnings flashing across the HUD, screaming *CALCULATION ERROR: FATAL TRAJECTORY.*

Kaelen shoved the throttle completely forward.

The experimental dark-matter engines did not produce a fiery exhaust. Instead, the space directly in front of the Blackbird violently folded. A tear in the fabric of reality ripped open, glowing with a terrifying, blinding violet light.

The fighter shot forward, instantly swallowed by the tear.

The violent acceleration crushed Kaelen back into his seat, stealing the breath from his lungs. The tactical displays went completely dead, shorted out by the sheer energy of the uncalculated jump.

Outside the canopy, there were no stars. There was no nebula. There was only a swirling, silent kaleidoscope of infinite, maddening colors as they tore through the raw, unfiltered dimension of hyperspace.

The silence inside the cockpit was absolute, broken only by the hum of the life support systems.

Kaelen uncurled his white-knuckled grip from the controls. His hands were shaking uncontrollably. He turned his head slowly, terrified of what he would find.

Jax was slumped in the co-pilot seat. His eyes were closed. His chest was impossibly still.

Kaelen reached out, his trembling fingers pressing against the cold skin of Jax's neck, searching the dark for a pulse.

Outside the glass, the violent, swirling void rushed past them, carrying the two best friends away from the war, away from the betrayal, and hurling them blindly toward an entirely unknown destiny.