Featured Excerpt:

from the upcoming story set in the Horizon universe.

By: David Feci 

The medical bay doors had barely closed behind him before the alert lights dimmed again.

For a moment, Engineering dropped into a low red haze.

Chief Sorin Jek could still smell burnt wiring in the air.

The attack had ended nearly twenty minutes earlier, but for Horizon and its crew the danger was far from over.

Around him, damaged panels had been torn open along the walls. Conduits hung exposed from the ceiling. One of the lower maintenance corridors was still blocked by collapsed plating. Somewhere deeper in the ship, someone was cutting through a sealed hatch with a torch.

Ensign Lira Vadir sat on the edge of a diagnostics console with a bandage wrapped around her upper arm.

“You should be in Medical,” Jek said.

Lira looked up from the portable scanner in her hands.

“And you shouldn't?”

Jek gave a tired smile at that.

Outside the long Engineering viewport, the stars remained fixed and cold beyond the glass. Off the port side, pieces of debris still drifted alongside the ship — fragments of hull plating, broken cargo housings, and one entire maintenance pod turning slowly end over end in the dark.

The NCV -01 Horizon had survived.

Barely.

A voice crackled overhead.

“Commander Raines to Chief Jek. Report to Shuttle Bay One immediately.”

Lira looked toward him.

“That sounds important.”

Jek pushed himself upright, one hand bracing briefly against the side of the console.

“Important is usually another word for dangerous,” he said.

For a second neither of them moved.

Then, somewhere above them, the ship groaned softly around its frame like an old machine trying very hard not to fall apart.