Children of Chronos, part 5

However, there was no time for intergalactic acrobatics, Shad thought, regretfully.

 “Hush,” said Valerie, seeing the pang spreading across his face. “There’s always time.” She held out a hand and Shad helped Valerie across the threshold of the lifesaving cube. They had been reborn in a shiny new skin, lustrous and glowing. Shad’s electronics were taut and dazzling fast as his synaptic nerves fired like pistons in a limited production super charged light speeder. Valerie kissed Shad on the cheek and shrugged past his shoulder, brushing a pert breast against reddening complexion. “Will you be synthesizing some new jumpsuits? I don’t think distractions will be of help in this moment.”

 Indeed, “Of course,” he stuttered, as his fingers itched to probe the illustrious newness of her flesh.

 Star Hopper was powering up. She hummed in open space, free of dust, between a triplet set of solar systems where the star light took a month or more to reach. Three stars, each with multiple planets, surrounded the spaceship at nearly equal distances. All uncharted, Star Hopper began the process of recording their positions in the universe. She named them Mnemosyne, Chronos and Tethys, and was beginning to name their children when interrupted.

 Warning diodes began to blink over the dash. The Crypic brain of Star Hopper sensed a disturbance, possibly a threat worse than the afore attacking Bastrages they had just evaded. Valerie had begun nibbling on Shad’s ear and her fingers were creeping in a most calamitous way. Shad reluctantly looked to the monitors.

 “Oh. Shit.”

 Aft, a star had gone supernova without warning – Star Hopper of course guessed at the event one nanosecond before when the sun completely vanished, collapsing in upon itself. Four unnamed children were consumed, all except one that had strayed far from Chronos in an elliptical orbit, and the gamma rays had mere minutes to reach, and unmercifully buffet the tiny steel shelter. Or deathtrap. Shad broke away from Valerie’s soft hands, pulling her to the jump seats. “Buckle up,” and the straps spider webbed across their chests.

 His mind and Star Hoppers split and searched frantically for a means of egress; there would be no outrunning the radioactive star plasma that stretched across the encroaching galactic landscape like spasmodic fingers in a voodoo death dance. Retracing their steps would do no good, as the way had vanished and besides, was suicide. The only hope was to find a hiding place, unlikely, or almost as unlikely the mouth of a traversable wormhole.

 “I see it,” Shad shouted, and Star Hopper rotated and detonated its afterburners, burning roughly ninety-nine percent of its available fuel in seconds – the race was on. The ship shook with the explosion, designed to give optimum boost without totally destroying the vessel. It was a calculated maneuver, an all or nothing wager. Chronos was filling the distances between, growing and distorting the panoramic with only a pinprick of darkness in the middle: Hestia, whom Star Hopper had christened and was their only shelter. The orphaned gas giant would part the waves of gamma rays for an instant while she crossed their path in a doomed orbit.

 A furtive wormhole flitted in the route, waiting to be obliterated by the suicide of Chronos. Star Hopper might reach the dubious refuge only in time to be crushed within its surely disintegrating entrails. Valerie was wide eyed, cursing the package that shook in its tethers as her pink bosoms bounced in the protective hug of her crash seat. Not privy to the evasive actions, she could only see her life pass like a parade while the sky bloomed like a passionate rose in a terran spring. A scream was rising in her gut.

 Shad mumbled encouragement to Hestia, probably doomed to wander on fire for an eon and more, and adjusted for clarity. The wormhole opened up, growing like a hole in the universe aflame, and then swallowed Star Hopper in a dying gulp. The ship groaned in relief as the vibration ceased and she fluidly traversed the gamma death in an instant, snaking along to parts unknown. “Don’t you dare look behind,” cautioned Shad, knowing full well that the wormhole collapsed in their wake. The engines would do no good here, so Star Hopper shut them down and regrew the charge from the sparse kinetics she could assimilate in transport.

 “We’ll be through in seconds,” he whispered, smiling at Valerie who could almost feel the heat creeping up her naked backside.