Free Diggers: The Sharp Edge of the Universe by Shannon Heather, Jerrett James

out of the screen after Maggie.
    “Maggie! Don’t hit him. They’ll send you to prison!” Gus wrestled with something Finn could only assume was his mom, off-screen.
    “If they’re going to send me to jail, at least let me finish him off first,” Maggie bellowed.
    His parents were mad at him, but they still loved him, and his mom’s savage response to Lee Fishborne caused tears to well up in Finn’s eyes. He’d been the worst son in history, and yet she still loved him.
    “Stop it! All of you,” Mikayla screamed. “We can’t get back to the Space Station.”
    The words were lost in the parent battle. The adults spent the next thirty minutes yelling at each other, making threats, and crying. Lee Fishborne kept going on about Finn killing his little princess, which made Finn snort a laugh. Mikayla could be a lot of things, but “Princess” definitely wasn’t one of them.
    Finally, Captain Windblown’s security personnel calmed everybody down. The adults sat in seats, silent except for the exchange of dirty looks and frequent heavy sighs.
    “Finnigan, is it?” Captain Windblown said. “Son, why in the universe did you steal the DUMP?”
    Finn stared at the floor. “I…b-borrowed…I don’t really know, sir. I just wanted to figure out what the anomaly is.”
    “And you thought you could figure it out better than our team of professionals because…?"
    Finn studied the heavy silver buckles running up the sides of his boots. “Umm….”
    “What in celestial dust came over you?” Captain Windblown rubbed his bald head.
    “Sir?” Mikayla stepped into view.
    “Oh, yes, dear?” Captain Windblown said.
    “We’ve learned a lot about the anomaly in the last twenty minutes. I think it would be a good idea, sir, while everyone is trying to pull us out of the anomaly, to send the information we’ve collected back to the Space Station. You see, sir, we’ve tried to back out, but the glass is melting behind us.” Mikayla's superb diversion tactic didn't go unnoticed by Finn.
    “What have you learned, Princess?” Lee Fishborne shot out of his chair and practically put a nose print on the screen.
    “First of all, Dad, if you call me Princess again, I’ll break the communication. You know how much I hate it.” Mikayla gave him a severe glare. “I’m not five years old anymore. I’m almost fourteen.”
    “Okay, sweetheart.” Lee Fishborne threw his hands up in surrender. “What have you learned…Mikayla?”
    “Well, I haven’t really learned anything. Reggie and Finn have done a lot of scans, and we know the anomaly is glass, but we have no idea how thick it is.”
    Lee Fishborne slapped a hand to his head. “Glass.”
    A murmur passed through the command deck, and Captain Windblown had a whispered conversation with Lee Fishborne and Finn’s parents.
    “Kids, we’re going to try to pull you out of the hole,” Captain Windblown said. “In the meantime, I want you to send us what you’ve learned through ELAINA so we can start processing the information immediately.”
    The wind rushed out of Finn's lungs. A punch in the gut would have been less painful. This meant he wouldn’t be making any discoveries. He’d be in jail watching Mikayla’s dad steal yet another discovery from the Diggers.
    “Yes…sir,” he said.
     
     

Chapter 13: Lost Cause
     
    “Thank you sir,” Finn said as Reggie and Mikayla loaded the last of the food rations and fuel cells.
    They had one month’s worth of food, water, and fuel, and no adults onboard after a number of failed attempts. The rations had been loaded through a space-to-space transfer—a long tube the diameter of Mikayla’s waist.   Finn’s dad, Quinn, and Lee Fishborne had all tried unsuccessfully to reach the DUMP, and they'd failed at the same point every time. The moment they started into the hole in the glass, the atmospheric change sent them spinning out of control into space, and the Space Station had to send out a rescue team to pick