The Dead Fleet (Juggernaut #3)

Sixty Six

'Mal?' she said quietly.

A dim red light glinted through the fractured fleet. It startled Ellie for a moment until she realised it wasn't weapon fire, but the sun. The ancient local star had found her, and that meant there was a way out.

Then it was gone again, lost behind rolling debris of the fleet.

But she had found a way out.

Ellie frowned at the navigation controls in front of her. She could see the wireframe representation of the fleet, and there was the crack to the surface and freedom, but how could she tell her ship that's where she wanted to go?

She pressed buttons cautiously, afraid of what might happen. Most did nothing, or at least, nothing she was aware of. One changed the style of imagery on the scanner. Another moved white brackets around different features on the display.

Unhelpful.

She tried another selection, and the display responded with a question.

Select Waypoint?

Ellie bit her lip, navigated through controls again and found the white bracket. This time she moved it over the exit she had seen, or as close as she could now that it was gone, and hit the waypoint menu again.

Waypoint confirmed, read the display as it locked in Ellie's best guess as to their way out. It would have to do.

She turned the ship left and right, experimenting to see what would happen. The navigation system sucked in data, updated her display, but her destination remained clear.

Well that's something, she thought. Now I just need to find the others.

The end of the huge ship was in sight. Now confident that she could find her way back, Ellie banked around the wreck in search of her friends.

She could only hope for the hundredth time that Tila and her mother has escaped the Solar Forge. Ellie looked hopefully at the Valkyrie's comms panel but it was silent and dark. She hoped Grace knew how to contact the Valkyries. All Ellie knew about ships was how to make them go fast. She was good at it, but it was slowly dawning on her that making ships go fast was the only thing she was good at. It was all she knew.

If we make it home I should change that.

The irony wasn't lost on her either.

Fast is all I know, and right now it's not enough, but it's still my best chance of getting out of here alive. We have a way out now. Once I find the others I can leave.

The thought that she could leave the fleet without Tila and Malachi and Grace never entered her head.

Three people. Two ships. One way out, she thought. And zero time to waste.

Ellie completed her turn and saw the other side of the ship. This was where the real damage had been done. Midway along the hull were holes where metal teeth had been formed by internal explosions. Even now she could see smaller pieces floating away from the ship.

Her scanner was already at work, pulling in data and tagging outputs with varying degrees of confidence. There was the neutral blue wireframe of the big wreck. The debris appeared as a line of white glitter on the scanner, so small were the fragments relative to the wireframe hull.

But there, at one end of the glitter was a green angled blip.

A Valkyrie.

Ellie looked up, the scanner forgotten.

'Mal?!' Ellie exclaimed before she remembered to hit the transmit button. 'Mal?'

No reply.

Ellie opened the throttle and surged through the space between them. Still ignoring the scanner, and failing to notice the red blips moving past Malachi's location.