How long did it take?

To build. In secret. On Earth.

Years? A decade?

How long did it take to fly to the outer edge of the known universe?

A Second? A heartbeat?

We are not supposed to be out here.

We are not supposed to be able to do this

“The AutoDrive should’ve taken us home!” Luke says. “Why aren’t we home?!”

Luke is yelling. Confused. In a state of absolute panic.

I can’t blame him.

“The AutoDrive is malfunctioning,” I say with a level head. “We’ll need to shut it down so we can figure out where we are and then figure out how to get home.”

“Why is it malfunctioning? Luke asks. “How is it malfunctioning. That’s not supposed to be possible. It’s a failsafe. It’s an automatic failsafe.”

“I don’t know… I just…” I trail off. Can’t explain. It doesn’t make sense.

Did someone break it? Did someone sabotage it?

Who? Why?

“So we can’t go home?” Wren asks.

“Not yet.”

“And when the AutoDrive kicks in again, we won’t know where it will take us?” Wren has a look on her face that tells me she is re-thinking our current security measures. The look on her face says we are not prepared for this. She says, “We are not prepared for this.”

“Correct.”

“It could take us back to the jungle planet,” Luke says, thinking out loud. “Where Jess…” he chokes up. Doesn’t say it.

Where Jess was killed. Shot to pieces. Taken. Torn apart.

“Yes. It could take us back there.”

“How do we shut it down?” Ethan asks. He wants the direct solution. The cost-effective solution.

Good question.

I bought the AutoDrive wholesale from the black market. In one piece. Installed it myself. In one piece. That’s how AutoDrives work. That’s how they come. They’re too complicated for any one person to build and manufacture. They are built by machines. Assembled by machines. They are sold as a complete working feature, ready to install into your interstellar spaceship. You need a working AutoDrive to make a jump, otherwise you run the risk of getting lost and stranded.

Just like we are now.

They cost more than a nation.

More than your soul.

I had to go through hell to get this one.

And it doesn’t even work.

Maybe I should stop buy things off the black market.

“John! How do we shut it down?!”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I need to run a diagnostic first.”

“Maybe we could try shutting it down,” Wren suggests. “Turn it off and then turn it back on? See if that works.”

“Not helping,” Luke says.

“Wait, where is Mason?” I ask. “Where is Skylar?”

Mason was hired by Wren as a backup security consultant. At my recommendation. Okay, I forced her to hire him. He has served with the Empire. He’s the only one of us who has been outside the solar system.

And Skylar has worked with me since day one. Before day one. Without her, none of this would’ve been possible. She helped me recruit the others. Helped me recruit Jess.

Stolen story; please report.

Wren is trying to contact Mason via the comm in her suit. There is no response.

“Wren, where is Mason?” I ask, panic in my voice rising.

“The ship reported an anomaly in the cargo hold. Mason and Skylar went to check it out.”

“What kind of an anomaly?”

“Stowaways.”

“That’s impossible,” I say. “Isn’t it?”

Who in their right mind would stowaway on this thing?

“Getting lost was supposed to be impossible as well,” Ethan says.

So is jumping through time and space. Lot of impossible things happening today.

“How long do we have?” Ethan asks. “Before the next jump.”

“We’ve got one hour,” Luke says.

The proximity alarm comes to life again. The ship tells us that we will not survive a direct hit from any one of those weapons being used on the nearby station. The ship also tells us that we will likely not survive an indirect hit.

“I don’t think we’re going to survive one hour,” Wren says. “We’re too close to whatever is going on here. If they see us, we’re dead.”

She’s right. That service station is under attack from multiple vessels. If one of those ships decides to come and take a closer look at us, if one of them decides to fire on us and ask questions later, we are dead.

“We Need to hide,” Luke says, standing over the main console. “The ship has done a preliminary scan of this planet and its facilities. There’s a derelict station close by.”

The derelict station fills the main display. It is heavily damaged. Covered in scorch marks. Surrounded by floating debris.

“It’s derelict because they’ve already blown it up,” Wren says. “They’ve already destroyed it. What the hell is going on here?”

“They wouldn’t just blow it up,” Luke says. “They would take it over. Raid it for supplies and resources first. They would salvage the thing for spare parts. It’s too valuable to destroy. Look at the size of the thing.”

“But what if they wanted to get rid of any evidence of what happened here.”

“Yeah, okay. I see your point. They would blow it up.”

“Maybe,” I say. “If they couldn’t steal it.”

“Steal it? Steal an entire station?”

I shrug. “Why not? That’s what I’d do.”

Ethan can’t believe what he is hearing. He is losing patience. “You’re out of your mind, John. Do you know that? You’re out of your goddamn mind! And we’re not going to last an hour just floating here. We’re not going to last an hour hiding behind a derelict service station. We’re not going to last five goddamn minutes. You’re going to get us all killed!”

Like I said, Ethan is the money man. He has paid for most, if not all of this. Including the currently malfunctioning AutoDrive. He paid for it all, not because he believed in the cause, but because he wanted to get paid. He wanted to turn a profit.

At least he’s up front about it. I can respect that.

I can even respect the fact that he is, as of right now, grabbing me by the throat, pushing me up against the main console, screaming in my face.

“Fix this, John! You need to fix the damn AutoDrive!”

Wren puts a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. Wren is in charge of security, but if I’m being honest, she’s actually more like Ethan’s security asset, his personal bodyguard. Afterall, Ethan is the one paying her. When she puts a hand on Ethan’s shoulder, she squeezes hard enough to make him stop and pay attention.

As far as I know, according to the rumors I’ve heard, Wren is a former DarkSky operator. And, as far as I know, according to the rumors I’ve heard, DarkSky operators are terrifying.

“Ethan. He can’t fix it if he can’t breathe.”

Up until this point, Wren has kept her cool. She has been decidedly not terrifying. However, I can’t help but notice she has her other hand on her sidearm, ready to intervene if I do anything stupid.

Ethan loosens his grip around my throat and takes a step back.

I take a deep breathe. My lungs hurt. My whole chest hurts.

Wren puts a finger in my face. “But you better get out of this mess before they realize someone else has stumbled into their little warzone,” she says. “You think they want any witnesses to what’s going on here today?”

“I didn’t get us into this mess,” I say. “I wasn’t the one who broke the AutoDrive.”

I state this as a fact. But I realize it’s not what my crew needs to hear. Deflecting blame. Avoiding responsibility.

This is my show. My mission. I was the one who made the jump.

Also, we don’t know that the AutoDrive is broken. We just know that it’s kind of not working at the moment. Which I guess is the same thing.

“It’s almost impossible to break an AutoDrive,” Luke says. “They’re built to survive a crash, a catastrophic failure of… everything. Like the flight recorder, they’re built to last.”

“Well, someone broke it,” Ethan says. “Or reprogrammed it. Or did something.”

“Re-programmed it is more likely,” Luke says, thinking out loud. “But a person wouldn’t be able to do it. You’d need to re-program a program, within a different program, within a different machine to do it.”

“That’s a lot of re-programming,” Wren says.

“It is. Which means it’s hard to do. Impossible to do. Which means, most likely, it was sabotaged.”

Ethan can’t believe it. “I was assured when I paid for the damn thing, that sabotage, or re-programming, or tinkering, or failure, was not a possibility!”

“Normally, it’s not.”

“And yet here we are!”

“Yes, here we are.”

Lost.

On the edge of space, the edge of the universe.

Ethan moves towards me like he’s going to strangle me again. “John, fix it. Fix it now. I’m not going to die out here. I don’t even know where here is!”

“I’ll fix it. It’s okay. I will fix it. We just need to make sure we are completely hidden. We just need to make sure we’re not going to be attacked.”

I try my best to calm Ethan down. I don’t know if it works. Wren drags him away.

Where the hell is Mason? I’d feel a lot better if he were here. Just in case Ethan decides he needs a new crew. Just in case he decides to order Wren to make his old crew, us, disappear. Wouldn’t be hard. She could overpower all of us easily. Break our bones like twigs. Throw us into the airlock. Our bodies would be pulled into the planet. No one in this galaxy or the next would know.

Snap out of it, John. Focus. You need to make this right.

You need to hide the ship behind the derelict space station so we don’t get attacked.

You need to fix the AutoDrive.

Need to do the impossible.

You’ve got one hour. Less than one hour.

Luke says it can’t be done.

Tell me something can’t be done. That’s all it takes