Mindee Arnett - Avalon

As they passed through the energy field, all the lights on the ship dimmed. A moment later, a burst of white noise crackled out of the comm speakers, making everybody jump. For a second Jeth thought he heard voices among the static.

Nobody said anything as the noise died away. Somehow the silence was even more unnerving, all the normal ship sounds louder and weirdly ominous.

Shady was the first to work up the courage to speak, but when he did, his voice was subdued. “So . . . what the hell was that?”

Nobody answered, not even Jeth.

After a moment Shady spoke again in a more normal voice. “Where do we head now, Captain?”

Jeth cringed a little, not thrilled with the new nickname. “Boss” was bad enough.

Lizzie answered for him. “The Donerail ’s last known position was alpha-two-six-one, also known as the Specter Sea.”

“Of course it is,” said Flynn, his voice higher-pitched than usual. “Because that’s exactly what you want to a name a place everybody is afraid of. I mean, why couldn’t they have called it the Sea of Puppies or maybe the Sea of Fluffy Kittens?”

“Don’t be such a wuss,” said Lizzie.

“How do we know that’s where the ship was last?” asked Shady.

“We don’t,” said Jeth. “It’s just an estimated location. One of Hammer’s ships was outside the Belgrave when they recorded the distress beacon, but with the dead zone screwing up the signal, they couldn’t triangulate exactly.”

“But why was the Donerail in the Belgrave in the first place?” asked Milton.

Jeth shrugged, wishing they’d found something about this job on the net.

Sitting up from his slumped position, Shady said, “The doc’s got a good point. Why would the Donerail go into this place? I mean, nobody goes in here except for criminals and nutjobs.”

“You mean, like us?” said Flynn.

“Look,” Jeth said, “it doesn’t matter why they came in here. All that matters is that we find the ship and bring her out. Lizzie, get us prepared for a jump to those coordinates.”

She saluted him. “Yes, Captain.”

Five minutes later, Avalon’ s metadrive successfully delivered them to the Donerail ’s last known position, but, to no one’s surprise, it was empty.

Jeth spent the next hour going over how to run Avalon’ s Explorer program. Part nav comp, part radar, the program had been designed years ago by Jeth’s mother. She had calibrated it specifically to handle the Belgrave’s energy fluctuations. Fortunately, the program mostly ran itself. All the crew had to do was keep an eye on the readouts and they’d be able to stay on course and search for the Donerail . Everyone got the hang of it pretty quickly, including Shady. Jeth considered this a small miracle, given his lack of interest in anything that didn’t involve a trigger followed by an explosion.

Of all the crew, Shady was the only one who’d done time in a juvenile detention center. His high score on Hammer’s aptitude test, combined with Jeth’s natural intuition that he would be a good match for the crew, was the only reason he wasn’t still in juvie.

Once he finished the demo on the Explorer program, Jeth went over the search strategy of using the shuttles to fly preprogrammed sweeps over the surrounding area. Then Jeth and Shady took the first shift and each boarded one of the two shuttles that Jeth’s parents had affectionately named Sparky and Flash .

“Make sure you spend as much time checking the readouts as you do playing video games,” Jeth said to Shady through the comm link. Flynn had suggested installing the gaming units in the shuttles a year ago, after multiple fights among the crew about needing more game time on the main unit installed in Avalon’ s common room.

“Oh, I will, Captain,” Shady said in a tone that suggested the opposite.

Jeth sighed and hoped for the best. At least the Donerail was too big for Shady not to notice it. He hoped. Jeth switched on autopilot, and Sparky soared away from Avalon .

Less than thirty minutes later another burst of white noise echoed from the comm speakers. Jeth gave a little yelp of fright, almost falling out of his chair. It was one thing for stuff like that to happen on board Avalon, with everybody else around him to lessen the impact, but out here he was completely alone and more prone to panic.

Hands shaking, Jeth reached for the game controller and switched it on, turning up the volume. Anything to make him forget that noise. He was glad he did, as it kept happening at random intervals.

By the end of the four-hour shift, Jeth had almost gotten used to it. Shady reported experiencing the same thing on his shuttle, while the others said it was occurring on Avalon, too.

“We can live with it,” Jeth said, trying to reassure everybody, including himself. “It’s just the weird energy fluxes in this place. No big deal.”

Turned out he was right. By the third day, they’d mostly gotten used to it. The only other strange phenomenon was that they had to keep readjusting the nav equipment’s calibration settings.

“It’s weird,” Lizzie said to Jeth after the sixth time she had to do this. “Almost as if there’s some kind of massive gravity field out there that keeps pulling us toward it.”

Jeth shrugged. “Maybe it’s a black hole.”

Lizzie didn’t offer an opinion. She’d been acting strangely the last two days, oddly withdrawn. She’d turned in early every night and slept in late every morning. Such antisocial behavior was anti-Lizzie, but Jeth chalked it up to the strain of being in the Belgrave and the constant reminder of what had happened to their parents.

On their fifth day in the Belgrave, one of the cooling units broke. It took Flynn half a day to fix it.

By the sixth day, Jeth was starting to worry about their lack of progress. Two weeks wasn’t a lot of time, and they hadn’t found so much as a drifting heat shield, and those fell off ships all the time in normal areas of space. No, for all the Belgrave Quadrant’s reputation of being a spacecraft boneyard, it was turning out to be more of a wasteland, devoid of anything except more space.

Jeth crawled out of bed early on the seventh day, exhausted from a restless night. He’d tossed and turned for hours, his mind obsessing about what would happen if they failed to find the Donerail . Would Hammer let him continue to search beyond two weeks? Or would the deal for Avalon go bust and life return to normal? Jeth didn’t think he could handle more normal. Not after coming so close to the life he wanted rather than the one he was stuck with.

These thoughts continued to cycle through his mind as he walked onto the bridge. To his surprise, Lizze was there, lying on the floor with her head and shoulders hidden beneath the life support station.

“What are you doing, Liz?”

There was a loud bang, followed by the sound of Lizzie groaning. She scooted out from underneath the station and scowled up at him, one hand rubbing her forehead. “Crap, Jeth. You made me jump and hit my head.”

Jeth pressed his lips together, trying not to laugh. It wasn’t funny, really, and yet it still was. “What are you doing under there?”

Lizzie rolled her eyes, but before she could answer Jeth heard a meow.

He gritted his teeth. “Please don’t tell me there’s a cat stuck inside the life support control panel. You know, the thing that makes sure the air we’re breathing doesn’t turn poisonous and kill us in our sleep?”

“He’s not stuck, just playing hard to get. I think.” She scooted back under the station—probably to avoid Jeth’s glower.