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“Thank fuck,” Orion exhaled, running a hand down his face. They were turning. Due toColossal’ssize, it would take close to five minutes—four minutes, fifty-seven seconds to be exact—to finish its arc and be back in intergalactic space. They were home free, finally free of his parents’ schemes.
They waited.
Three minutes till we’re out,Nav updated.
Kaia grinned from ear to ear, making Orion lean over to kiss her cheek because it was impossible not to when she looked that goddamn happy. The last two years with her had been something else, despite all the shit going on around them. She was the only thing that kept him sane and prevented him from killing everyone and anyone involved in this stupid X1s plan.
Two minutes until we’re… wait. Radar check.
Hushed voices rose as the departments congregated.
“Unknown-class vessel approaching, distance two hundred miles and closing,” the navigator announced.
“Weapons ready,” Orion instructed.
“Roger.”
“Comms coming through.” The officer on comms swiveled toward him, waiting.
Orion’s mind raced with who—or what—might be on the other end of that line.
“Wait… sir, it’s theElysian. The ship isElysian!”
Dread became elation that was reflected in the excited murmurs all around him.Elysianwas intact? Could they have found what they were looking for, here of all places? Had they been settling a New Earth all these years? Why else hadn’t they returned?
“Put them through.” Orion edged forward in his seat.
“Yes, sir,” Comms acknowledged with a beaming smile.
It was the comms officer that screamed first when the transmission beamed onto the hull. Kaia recoiled in her seat, terror flooding his feed. It was justified.
It was a man, but only barely. The body was suspended from the ceiling in what looked to beElysian’scommand center. A sampler stretched from the socket in its wrist, a glob of dried blood crusted thickly at the entry point. Cylinders attached to moving pumps expanded and contracted the body’s skeletal chest cavity, and countless thin IV tubes extended like spiderwebs from every inch of what used to be the colony’s commander.
Then a monster came into view.
“Colossal,” the uhyre rattled a guttural sound in deep, broken Universal. “We have been waiting.”
* * *
