The Betwixt Book One

  Chapter 8

  He didn’t come after me. I didn’t want him too, obviously. Yet I felt the fact that he hadn’t rushed up to me like you might feel the chill of the coldest winter’s night.

  By the time we loaded everything aboard the Crag freighter, I felt sick to my stomach. It was all so real now. One look at the sparse, mechanical, rusted ship was enough to hammer home how lost I was going to be after this point. There wasn’t going to be any familiar space station out there – no nice warm bed to crawl back to, no bunny-printed covers to pull over my head.

  This was space travel now, space travel with a couple of spoonfuls of Twixts stirred into the mix. Because, as Od had warned me, they could be anywhere now. On any ship we went on, any planet we visited, any fueling station we pulled into – the Twixts could be waiting for us. They wouldn’t wait passively, he assured me – they would pro-actively destroy what they encountered, as it was their way.

  I was a near total nervous wreck by the time the Crag freighter pulled out of dock. This was it. My journey had begun. I still didn’t have any proper weapons or any real clues to follow – so the game was practically up before it had begun.

  If it weren’t for Od sitting by my side in what couldn’t be properly referred to as our quarters (it was, in fact, a service closet off the main cargo bay – freighters weren’t usually kind to passengers who weren’t packed in cargo canisters), I would have blacked out from the fear. The guy was keeping me sane with his insanely annoying conversation style.

  “I imagine we will have things to find on this moon,” he said, sitting neatly beside me, hands in his lap. “Things that could be of importance to us.”

  Captain Obvious Od was striking again. Over ninety percent of what he said was rephrasing earlier statements. It drove me bonkers – and bonkers was good right now; it would stop me from chewing my fingernails off and shaking like a lost leaf in an air tunnel.

  “How long will it take to get there?” I had asked this question before but so far hadn’t managed to get an actual answer from Od. He’d spin off onto tangents in his truly random way.

  “I believe this freighter is not scheduled to have any stop-offs either in this system or the next. Without any unforeseen trouble, I would suggest an estimated time of arrival for approximately seven days, three hours, and fifteen minutes. Give or take a minute, here or there, for congestion in Crag space.”

  Seven days, three hours, and fifteen minutes? I had forgotten how long and boring space travel was. That was the thing about space – it was big. Crag was only several systems away – practically next door when it came to the galaxy. Still, what was I going to do for all that time? Drive myself crazy worrying about what would happen next, most likely, that and spend far too much time going over my last moments with Jason – over and over and over again.

  “I suggest you spend this time in reflection,” Od continued, hands still held so primly, “For your coming quest. Though I am by no means an expert in this, I feel at a time like this a warrior, such as yourself, should imagine the qualities that will help her to succeed—”

  “You want me to pool together all my resources and make an action plan, right?” I cut in.

  “Something like that—”

  “Well, that’s simple – I don’t have any resources, and I don’t have a plan.”

  “Well,” Od got up to pace the tiny, windowless room, “You have seven days, three hours, and fourteen minutes to come up with such things.”