One Between the Stars

Chapter 22

 Carson and Ionia found Arthre passed out on the floor of the cockpit.

"Art!" Carson said in alarm, and they both rushed over to him.

He shook the squire, and slowly he came to. He blinked and moaned, looking up at them vaguely.

"Carson?" He mumbled. His eyes shifted to Ionia. "What...?"

"What happened?" Ionia asked.

"Gah...I think I hit my head..." He lifted his hair up to reveal a nasty purple welp. Carson hissed through his teeth. He helped Arthre into the chair.

"Well, we were going to punish you for almost killing me," Carson said with a grim smile, "But it seems the universe has already done that for us."

"I forgot you were still out there," he said.

"What'd you think? I decided to float off on my own?" Carson said with a laugh. The kid was obviously still disoriented. "Come on kid, let's get you some ice..." Arthre leaned on him as the two headed for the infirmary.

"Wait," Arthre said weakly. "The autopilot's not on. We're drifting..."

"Io, can you check the computer?" Carson turned back to the princess.

She blinked. "I don't know how this ship works."

"Just tell Evie to turn the autopilot on," he explained. "Then tell her to run you through the status of the systems."

She nodded, and Carson led Arthre down to the infirmary. When there, Carson set the squire on the table, then grabbed a plastic bag and a small metal device from the cabinets. Arthre remained quiet, wincing every so often.

"What happened while you were out there?" the squire asked, touching the lump on his head gingerly. Against his dark skin, it looked a purplish black.

"I should ask you what was going on in there," Carson said, filling the bag with water from the sink. "But if we're exchanging stories, you asked first. There was an asteroid that hit the ship while I was out there."

"Yeah, I remember the ship rocking."

"Mm-hm. It came close to hitting me. I lost my grip and hit the side of the ship. Busted my intercom."

"That's why I couldn't hear you."

He nodded. "So there were two gashes in the ship, and I had to repair them both." Carson held the device to the sealed bag and pressed a button. The water froze. Carson set the device down and cracked the ice on the counter once, then handed the bag to Arthre. "So what was going on in the cockpit while I was out there?"

Arthre wouldn't look at him. He seemed to be searching for something, forming his words carefully. "I don't..."

Ionia came into the room, her face pale. "Evie just told me the status of the ship."

"And?" Carson raised his eyebrow. He noticed that Ionia and he were still in their bulky spacesuits, and Ionia had tied her hair up. He remembered looking at that hair when he'd been so sure that he was going to die, at those colors that seemed to shift when she moved, thinking how she was nothing like the coldness and harshness of the Great Nothing...

"We've suffered significant oxygen loss," she said. "But we're stable enough to be okay for now. I don't know how we're going to fix the damage to the ship..."

"We'll have to stop somewhere," Carson mused. "But for now, what else is there?"

Ionia's eyes flashed with that he'd come to learn was a sort of intense curiosity, something that sparked her interest. She said, "The asteroid that hit while you were out there, it knocked something loose in the artificial gravity."