Chapter 62: Chapter 62

Maya “You saw a bug?” Maya wondered aloud, a little incredulous and a little concerned.

Xhisara, Joe, Ke and Maya were sat in the mess hall.

“I certainly saw something,” Joe frowned. “About an onglar long.”

Joe opened his fingers to show a four or five inch length which the others gathered was a unit of measurement in his world.

“Yay to uber bugs,” muttered Ke.

“Space bugs? I hope they’re not poisonous!” Xhisara regarded the now bug-free edge of the mess hall warily.

“You’ve heard of them?” asked Maya, grossed out.

“Well, no. They’re in space. That makes them space bugs.” Xhisara’s wisdom was irrefutable.

“We’re in space, does that make us space people?” Ke asked, his eyebrows went north, while he gesticulated like a gulping fish.

“You are definitely a space cadet, that’s for sure!” declared Maya, making Joe nearly fall off his seat laughing. She didn’t know how he could understand the simile, but he was most entertaining.

“What has this,” Xhisara mimicked the mouth movement of Ke. “Got to do with space?” Her sincerity at the ridiculous gawping just about finished Joe off, his head on the table while his body wracked with hysterical laughter.

Maya was shaking her head, beginning to join Joe in the realms of the hysterics when a loud baritone note sounded in the air. She had no idea what it was but Xhisara instantly vanished, reappearing a moment later.

“We’ve got company, we need to get out of here. Maya take everyone to the control deck,” Xhisara informed her as she vanished again, and Maya engulfed the rest of them to the control deck, finding no-one there.

A moment later Xhisara appeared, having gone to the control deck in the other end of the ship.

, thought Maya.

Immediately Xhisara went to one of the extensive control panels and pushed buttons as if she knew what she were doing. The ceiling changed from golden metal to mirror the vista of stars outside.

A large ship was approaching, and they saw that they did indeed need to get out of there.

“Take us as far as you can see, into blank space between stars. Don’t take us near a star,” Xhisara instructed in a more controlled voice than Maya would have been able to muster.

Maya realised she was going to have to do it alone, as they could not pinpoint a destination together.

“Come Maya, feel the ship, you have seen her. Feel her perimeter, take us as far as you dare,” Xhisara’s voice was soft but urgent. Maya closed her eyes, feeling the edges of the ship and everything in her.

Maya looked into the stars, and picked a point in the middle distance, away from any stars. She could not even hazard a guess at the distance they were about to travel, so she put it from her mind and concentrated on the perimeter of the ship.

She opened her eyes and the stars had changed.

“Well done,” congratulated Xhisara, and the others nodded in agreement. “Another hop?”

Maya nodded, and yet again focussed on an area of space in the middle distance and jumped them again. She repeated the process several times until they were satisfied that the other ship could not track them.

Leaning against the main control console, Joe breathed a sigh of relief. He looked visibly flustered, and decades older than the laughing man only moments before.

Ke looked around, staring at gizmos and switches, knobs and lights with awe, as ignorant as Maya as to the purpose of the controls or the glyphs which accompanied them.

Sauntering out the room, Maya thought about how long it had been since she had seen Ka. She had pushed him away, but then he had been driving her mad. His way of coping with everything that had happened was to grab her and hang on to her for dear life, physically. To say she felt claustrophobic doesn’t quite cover it, the man was suffocating her.

Nevertheless, Maya knew he needed her, and knew he had lost her for a while, forever in a way. She had just needed some space.

Maya wandered down to their room, which was on the floor below control deck B where she had just departed. She opened the door, practising her speech of remorse and beseeching for space, expecting Ka’s mug to be staring at her from the bed, but found the room empty.

Surprised, she moved on, wondering if he was in with Les. Knocking on Les’s door elicited no response so she opened it to find the sole occupant of the room comatose on the bed.

She continued to search the ship to no avail. Maya wandered into the mess hall where Ke, Joe and Xhisara were eating.

“Anyone seen Ka? I’ve just searched everywhere, he’s not there,” she asked the surprised diners.

“No, I haven’t seen him in hours,” Xhisara looked at her quizzically. The other two shook their heads.

“Have you checked the cargo bay, he might have gone outside,” suggested Ke.

“When we’ve just been hopping?” Joe asked.

“He might not know that,” Xhisara said thoughtfully. “It was hardly a rough ride.”

Maya immediately engulfed down to one of the cargo bays, but found herself still in the mess hall. Again she tried, and again, but nothing happened.

“I’m still here? Why? This makes no sense?” implored Maya.

“What do you mean?” Xhisara was on her feet, making her way around the large table.

“I mean, no portal, no travel, no mojo, I’m still here!” she shrieked, her voice rising in pitch and volume as panic overtook her.

“Can you walk into a portal?” Xhisara asked calmly, taking her hand.

“No,” she gasped, trying with all her might. Maya felt truly helpless for the first time since being told she was mad and that her world wasn’t real.

“Okay,” Xhisara soothed. “I’ll go check the cargo bays, then we’ll figure this out.”

At that, she released Maya’s hand only to remain standing there.

“Oh dear,” she murmured, her face falling to match Maya’s. “Oh deary dear.”

“What’s going on?” Joe asked. “You’ve lost your powers?”

“Uh huh,” Maya nodded miserably.

“I’ll go check cargo bay A for Ka, Joe, you check bay B,” Ke ordered, leaving the two stranded women alone.

“Has this ever happened before?” asked Maya, hoping with every fibre of her being that Xhisara would say yes, it was going to be fine.

“Never.” Xhisara frowned for the first time since Maya had met her, it looked unpleasant on her normally calm face.

Maya looked down at the floor as her neck complained at craning it to look at the enormous woman. Xhisara mistook the action as Maya being upset, and she patted her sympathetically on the shoulder with her spade of a hand, causing Maya to sink slightly into the metal floor.

Maya felt that her brain had melted somewhere in her skull and dribbled down her neck in an icy trickle as it began to hit her what had happened, what was going to happen.

Ke came running back in and skidded across the floor to a stop in front of the ladies.

“He’s not there,” Ke panted. “There’s a suit missing.”

“A suit, you mean he’s outside?” asked Maya, trying to shake the mist that was settling in her brain.

“He was outside,” Les approached from the rear, making them all jump as no-one heard him coming. “He wanted some space. Literally.”

“How long ago?” demanded Maya in an almost blood curdling scream. “How long?”

“About half an hour ago tops,” Les’s face was red from the exertion of running to them. Joe was behind him.

“We hopped...” started Maya.

“Five minutes ago.” Xhisara finished.

Maya screamed a swear word at the top of her lungs. They had just left her boyfriend floating around in open space in a suit with what could be an enemy ship that they had fled from.

“The ship would have picked him up,” said Joe, attempting something resembling reassurance. “They were no doubt friendly, we were just being cautious by running.”

“Not least that we didn’t know how to work this ship, we would have seemed hostile by ignoring their hail,” Ke’s reassurances coming from Ka’s face made Maya’s blood boil.

“We left him behind!” screamed Maya at the top of her lungs, balling her fists and stretching her arms out on either side of her. “He was out there because of me, and I left him behind!”

Maya’s voice cracked with the exertion of screaming at the top of her lungs, and she collapsed in a heap on the floor. She felt a hand touch her leg, and looked up to see Les’s kind face looking into hers. Only understood.

“Wasn’t he on a rope?” asked Joe from somewhere above Maya.

“Yes,” murmured Les, not looking away from her.

“Maya took only the ship,” Xhisara’s voice wavered.

“I pushed him away,” muttered Maya, her face in her hands.

“You both needed some time, nothing is anyone’s fault. At least he could still be fine. Consider that a luxury,” Les’s face was still and steady when Maya looked at it. Her head span, the world span and she threw up in Les’s lap.