Grimspace.

And so, just as I have to trust him to make the right adjustments to the controls, safeguard my body while I’m seeing nothing but a world so wide that I don’t have words to encompass it, he has to trust that I’m not going to steer him wrong. Oddly, even though I can do it, I have only a fundamental grasp of the principles.

Jump ships all carry a phase drive that accesses the secondary space that bends distance beneath, between, whatever, two points in straight space. To get from here to there, you jump into grimspace via the phase drive, then your navigator finds the beacon nearest your destination, and you make the jump back. The beacons are like doors, portals, something, a corridor back and forth, and the phase drive, well, that’s the key.

Eons after discovering its existence, we’re still exploring the Star Road. That was our specialty, Kai and me. Making long jumps to places no one’s ever been. Tagging new beacons. Logging what’s there and providing charts for the Corp, sometimes livable worlds, sometimes gas giants, sometimes asteroid belts where a planet might have been.

I loved it. Loved him, after a while.

Lost him.

Oh God, Kai, I’m sorry, baby. It’s too soon.

March is looking at me. Waiting for me to jack in. But he doesn’t say anything, nothing to ease the moment but nothing to make it harder, either. He doesn’t bitch at me to hurry, even though I need to, or tell me that there are lives hanging on me. There are always lives hanging on me. Maybe that’s why jumpers go crazy.

Control yourself, Jax; don’t let nerves get you.

He’s not Kai, never will be, but I’ve got to learn to do this with him. In a way, it’s more intimate than fucking a stranger because he’s going to be part of me for the duration of our flight. I don’t want March inside of me.

Loras speaks over the comm, calm, measured. “Launch override codes input, bay doors opening in approximately ten seconds. You’ll need to hold them, though. Corp security won’t permit them to remain that way long.”

I feel the swerve as the ship lifts, reluctantly admire the way March handles the controls. The weapons systems come online, and he fires, disabling the bay doors. They’re standing wide now, and I can see through the forward screen that the gray men are fighting vacuum; nothing about this has gone according to Corp procedure. Gray men don’t boast flexibility as one of their dominant traits. They expected to stop us in the bay; we weren’t supposed to get this far. But we have. One thing about gray men…they just don’t quit. They’re going to hunt us to the end of the galaxy.

Cheerful fragging thought.

“Dina, take over guns. Return fire, keep them off us.”

And in a graceful spin, we’re out, weapons fire coming in hard on aft shields. They’re scrambling ships, but it will take time to find a jumper fit to run, and we’ve got one ready to go. Me. The stars swim around us, and part of me thrills to it, even as I suck in a breath, preparing myself for March. I’m a virgin on her wedding night, arranged marriage, and I’ve never even given him a closed-mouth kiss.

“What’s our destination?” I ask. “Let me see the star charts.”

That seems to reassure him because a good jumper always wants to see the locus of two points in straight space before she tries to translate it. And I’m no exception. I study the maps for a minute, noting that we’re making for a habitable rim world. Lachion. It’s just an outpost, really, a place to refuel, buy supplies and a whore for the night.

Taking a deep breath, I plug in.

And the cockpit disappears.

Right now I’m simply blind. He’s giving instructions over the comm, and I hear the crew acknowledging orders. They’ve strapped in and donned their helmets. Superstitious spacers say if you don’t wear your headgear during a jump, there are demons waiting to suck the soul right out of your body. While that sounds a whole lot like Old Terra sailors who believed sea monsters would eat you if you sailed over the edge of the world, I do know it’s a bad idea to run unprotected.

We haven’t made the jump yet, and I can feel the phase drive powering up, the trembling hum of the seat beneath my fingertips. And then March plugs in beside me, and I can feel him in ways I never wanted to. There’s no give to him, even here, but I sense a self-deprecating humor that I didn’t expect, and it gentles him, making him easier to bear.

You ready? He doesn’t need to say it any more than I need to vocalize my response. At this moment, we’re beyond all that. We’re pilot and jumper, and we’re going forth together.

Now.

The world opens up to me, an orchid unfurling at accelerated speed. I think of it as the primeval soup from whence all life originally came, a maelstrom of chaos and energy, sights the human mind isn’t supposed to be able to parse, let alone convert into coherent images that can be used to navigate.

Because of the J-gene I can sense the beacons, feel them pulsing like sentient life, and perhaps they are, for all I know. Perhaps if we could find their frequency, we could converse with them and discover we’ve long been diving down the gullets of cosmic dragons and shooting out their cloacae to somewhere else, and guess what, they aren’t exactly happy about it. On second thought, some mysteries simply shouldn’t be delved into.

He senses my directives in the same oblique manner in which I’m conscious of his hands on the controls. I feel him making adjustments according to what I see, a symbiosis that’s never seemed more miraculous than this moment. It’s an eternity; it’s a heartbeat, and grimspace gazes back at me, scintillant and impossibly alluring.

That’s the bait in the trap, you want to stop focusing on yourself and you want to explore in ways that aren’t corporeally possible. For the first time it occurs to me—perhaps burnout isn’t such a dreadful thing. Perhaps it’s nothing to fear at all, simply another doorway opening.

No. That’s March. Rare for a pilot to risk breaking a jumper’s concentration, but I sense frissons of tension rippling through him, soul deep. That’s how a navigator thinks, preparing herself for the last run. You’re not there. You’re not.

Instinctively, I reassure him. I don’t know why he gives a shit. But it hurts him to think of leaving me here. I feel it, crashing over me in waves he can’t quite subdue. Maybe it’s transference. He’s grieving, too…for Edaine, who was his friend, if not his jumper, for someone named Svet, and for another navigator whose name I don’t know. I glimpsed his myriad losses before his walls came up, and I don’t know when I ever saw someone so alone.

Before this moment, I never thought about what it’s like for a pilot when his jumper leaves him behind. End of the flight, and she’s still in the nav chair beside him, but she’s gone. The spark, radiance, whatever made her unique. Gone. I know what it’s like to be left behind. And that’s rare for a jumper; we don’t have long life expectancies.

Almost there.

Gravitational pull. My mind’s wide-open, full of flares, sheer artistry that even the best pilot cannot comprehend. At its most basic level, the universe is beautiful. We’re about to slingshot through our target beacon and back out to straight space.

I’ve done it.

Distantly I know that the ship’s trembling beneath me again, readying itself for the second jump. And then feel it, the instant before I go blind again. Leaving grimspace hurts. But then, what doesn’t?

We should be just a short cruise away from Lachion. So many outposts spring up along the Star Road, and the only thing that comes close to the feeling after a solid run is free fall. For this moment, I don’t even mind that March is here, sharing my pleasure, that I’m making him feel good because I do. But he’s not sampling that on purpose. As soon as he can, he unplugs, and I do the same. Even though I don’t know him, not even sure if I like him, I already miss him. You don’t know what it’s like to be alone until you’ve had someone inside your head.

And that, you see, is why so many pilots and jumpers wind up sleeping together. It’s too much on the senses—that mutual stimulation needs an outlet, and there comes a point when nobody else will do. You want to share your body the way you’ve shared your mind, so many times, and the sex is better, stronger, and so intense.

Some pairs do it while jacked in, not while jumping, of course, but in the cockpit, joined both ways, writhing together, ecstasy washing back and forth in a closed circuit, constantly driving things higher. It becomes its own addiction after a while, and I’ve known pilots who simply can’t perform unless they’re with a jumper.

Anything else is just too vanilla.

CHAPTER 5

Like he knows what I’m thinking, March flicks me a scathing look as he signals the crew it’s safe to unstrap from the harnesses and remove helmets. While they report back, I decide that doing me, jacked in or otherwise, is the last thing on his mind. That’s good; it’s a complication I neither want nor need. I stretch, conscious of no more wear and tear than a residual headache, like a day-old hangover.

I’ve had worse.

Leaning forward, I take a look at our updated position on the nav charts, and yeah, we came out right on target. Lachion’s less than a two-hour cruise, and I settle back to watch. Don’t know what I think I’ll learn, but he’s good at what he does; sure, capable hands manipulating the controls, attentive to various readings. Stuff I don’t understand, to be honest. I’m not a pilot, although I’ve spent almost half my life on board ships.

“Good jump,” he says finally.

And it’s a surprise to hear his voice, different, more forceful. Then I could sense his uncertainties and constant grief. Now he’s all steel and implacable resolve again.

“I don’t think it was my fault,” I blurt, before I’ve formed the words inside my own head. But I need to say it. I need someone to believe me. Don’t know whether March is that someone, but I need some of the weight off my soul.

He cuts me a sharp look, a full ten seconds away from the control panel. “Matins IV?” As if there’s any doubt what I mean.

“Yeah.” I don’t look at him. Instead I stare out into straight space, nothing too fascinating there for one accustomed to wildfire. But it’s better than measuring his expression, doubting my own credibility.

“We don’t think so, either,” he answers, neutral.

Something in his tone tells me he’s speaking more for others than himself. Having seen inside him, I can say with authority—March is a man, who, if asked to capture the legendary pink orangutan of New Inglaterra, would devise a foolproof plan to catch said beast and equip himself with all necessary accoutrements, and never mind the fact that he doesn’t believe in the thing. So, no, he doesn’t necessarily believe me. But that doesn’t matter to him because he’s been asked to deliver me, and I’m starting to wonder why.

“Why me?” I know I don’t need to clarify.

One of the advantages to the pilot/jumper bond is that even when you jack out, you carry certain awareness with you, remembrance of how your partner’s mind works. He’ll know what I’m asking although he could choose to be an ass and feign incomprehension. I respect the fact that he doesn’t.