Flight exerpt

Scott drew in a long, slow breath, drinking in the icy air like a thin, black dew. His nose was numb from the cold. He closed his eyes against the looming darkness, and let his mind run loose over his calculations. Scott tossed and spun figures in his mind, creating, destroying, and recreating landscapes of possible speeds and trajectories for his small ship. In this local valley of spacetime, days out from the Arturu Gate, only a halo of cool starlight reached the ship from the pinpoints spread across the static blanket of strange, dark energy. The Edge coasted through a smooth river of darkness nearly as deep outside its hull as inside.