Castaways

By Jessica Marting

The destruction of the starship Vesper leaves Commander Dom Nakobi and Ensign Cosima Platt lost in the Gold Pass System and without a way to get home. Finding a space station in the middle of nowhere seems to be the answer to their prayers, at least until they discover that it's abandoned and directly in the path of an incoming ion storm.

With mere hours before the storm hits, Dom and Cosima race against the clock to find a way off the station. And if they only have so little time left to live anyway, what's the harm in finding other ways to pass it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shadow Press
• Release date: Nov 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9780993922220

Jessica Marting

Jessica Marting writes sci-fi and paranormal romance. She lives in Toronto with her husband and far too many pets.

Book preview

CASTAWAYS

Jessica Marting

Table of Contents

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

About the Author

Chapter One

The red alert klaxons were so loud that Ensign Cosima Platt thought she might actually go deaf if and when they were ever turned off. As it was, she could no longer hear the urgent shouts of her fellow engineers in the engine room and had to rely on lip-reading. She watched Commander Lind’s lips move in her direction, an order to help her divert power to the failing jump drive.

The jump drive is failing?

It finally dawned on Cosima that this wasn’t an old spacecraft just being difficult. Power diversion? That meant something was about to blow up or had already blown up in another part of the ship, or something equally disastrous. For all of the difficulties the Vesper gave her crew, all of the false alarms and malfunctioning, outdated equipment, she could still be counted on to lumber through the dark vacuum of space.

Until now.

Hands clammy and fear leaving a metallic taste in her mouth, Cosima joined Commander Lind at her command console. But there was something wrong with the console’s screens, the ship’s systems not authorizing them to divert power. Instead, big red letters flashed across them, a single word marching across.

EVACUATE.

Was it possible the alarms were growing louder or was Cosima’s hearing just permanently damaged? Did it matter, if she and the rest of the Vesper’s crew were about to be blown to pieces? She looked up to Commander Lind, but the older woman’s face was pinched in concentration. She barked something into the comm chip pinned to her uniform collar. The ship lurched violently to one side, and Cosima fell into the commander.

Finally, the klaxons ceased their noise, leaving only their red lights flashing on and off. The overhead lights clicked off, replaced with dim green emergency lighting. It took a few seconds for Cosima’s ears to stop ringing long enough to hear what Commander Lind was saying to the crew still in the engine room.

Escape pods, everyone! she shouted. "There’s no time to return to your quarters for personal effects! We have less than six minutes before this piece of shit blows itself out of the space lanes! Everybody move!"

Cosima was nearly trampled in the ensuing pandemonium.

The escape pods were berthed on Aft Deck 4, two decks above the engine room. Cosima lagged behind the other engineers and joined a throng of crew pushing for the staircases, hoping everyone, including her, made it to the escape pods in time.

She heard a roared curse in Ro’takka, a language she had only a passing knowledge of, followed by another, more familiar one in Basic. Bloody fucking hell!

Cosima turned her head and saw the engine room’s blast doors closing with an audible hiss. Through their windows, she spotted the face of Commander Nakobi, engineering’s second-in-command. His dark eyebrows were furrowed, anger written across his face. But beneath it, Cosima saw fright.

If the blast doors were locking into place, that meant the ship was about to blow. She looked around the crowd for someone to help get the commander out, but no one paid her any attention.

She ran to the blast door but the automatic sensor didn’t respond to her presence to unlock it. The commander tapped on the window and pointed toward the floor. His voice was muffled but Cosima could still hear him. There’s a manual release in the wall!

She looked down at the floor and saw a small door panel camouflaged in the wall. She pressed it and it popped open, revealing a lever. She tugged at it with all of her strength until the blast door opened just enough for the commander to squeeze through.

He didn’t stop to thank her, instead grabbing her arm. Not for the first time, Cosima was glad she’d kept up with PT since her graduation from the Interplanetary Fleet Military Academy. They ran down the corridor to the stairs, the corridors now eerily quiet. The klaxons had been silenced, and the rest of the crew was probably in the launch bay, being pushed out of the ship in secured