Trial by Fire: Chapter Eleven

Adrift off Barnard’s Star 2 C

    The airlock was even smaller than it had looked from outside, barely big enough to hold the two of them at the same time. Caine kept the ten-millimeter trained on the squarish doorway that led deeper into the craft, watching for any changes in the lights on the panels that flanked it.

    In the meantime, Trevor had found a knob similar to the one on the outside of the hull and was turning it rapidly. As he did, a hard-edged shadow advanced across the door, the floor, and finally, cut off all external light into airlock: the outer hatch was sealed. The red radiation icon on Caine’s HUD flickered into orange and then disappeared. The Arat Kur have pretty damn efficient rad shielding, considering there’s no sign of an operating EM grid. However, there were still radiation worries: Caine’s chronometer read 144 seconds total elapsed mission time. That meant almost seventy-five REM whole body dose for Trevor, about fifty-five for Caine. Plus the thirty REM they had picked up when their own EM grid had to be shut off yesterday, and whatever else they were going to pick up making the jump back to the Auxiliary Command Module. In all probability, they weren’t going to be feeling too well for the next couple of days.

    Trevor moved over to the control panel beside the inner door, briefly inspected the lights and the glyphs beneath them. He tapped the bottom half of the panel, exploring.

    Caine touched helmets. “What are you looking for?”

    “This.” Trevor was now sliding aside the lower half of the panel, revealing three smaller, cruciform knobs. “Manual systems in case the power is out.”

    “Won’t they be disabled or locked off?”

    “Not unless there was a survivor on board who saw us coming and wanted to keep us out. You have to leave manual overrides functional during routine ops. Otherwise, if your power goes down and you’re unconscious or unable to move, rescuers can’t get to you unless they breach the hull. And I guess our adversary has learned the same lesson.”

    “So since they’re not locked off, maybe that indicates there aren’t any survivors to take that precaution. Besides, survivors should have tried to effect repairs and rejoin their own fleet, particularly since this ship doesn’t seem too badly damaged.”

    “Don’t judge a book by its cover, Caine, particularly when it comes to sensitive machines like spacecraft. They can look fine on the outside but can be hopelessly fubared inside.”

    “I wonder how fubared this craft really is.”

    “Why?”

    “The rads dropped away completely when you shut the door behind us.”

    Trevor shrugged, digging for a small tool kit on his utility harness. “They’re probably way ahead of us in material sciences.”

    Caine shook his head. “You’d need tremendous density to stop that much particle radiation.”

    “So what are you saying?”

    “I’m saying that this ship might still have enough power to be shielding itself, somehow.”

    “Then why didn’t our passive sensors pick up the electromagnetic anomalies?”

    “I don’t know. Maybe their EM field effect is not projected, but remains within the matter comprising the hull. Sort of how active electrobonding works, only this version is designed to repel charged particles rather than strengthen the bonds between molecules in hull materials.”

    Trevor was silent before replying. “Where would the power come from? Their fusion plant is cold.”

    “I don’t know. Batteries, possibly on constant recharge if some part of the hull is sensitized to work like a solar panel.”

    “Which would probably mean that somebody on board did survive the battle,” Trevor pointed out. “What you’re describing is not an automated emergency backup system. It would need someone to activate and integrate all those functions.” Trevor put a hand on one of the three small knobs. “So, assuming we have an enemy to meet, let’s get moving. Stand to the side and cover the door.”

    Caine crunched himself into the nearest corner, took the gun in both hands, extended it out in front of himself. The first knob that Trevor manipulated activated a series of dim red lighting bars that outlined the inner airlock door. The lights flashed rapidly. Probably the knob for opening the inner airlock door, the alarm signifying that the airlock itself was still unpressurized. “I’m no linguist, but I think red is their color for danger, too.”

    Caine nodded his agreement and re-centered the handgun’s laser sight on the interior door.

    The next knob Trevor tried had no immediately observable effect, but after several seconds, they noticed a faint external sound: the rush of air. Trevor squeezed himself to the other side of the interior airlock door, drew a pry-bar from his tool-kit, and hefted it. Caine heard his voice over the helmet speakers. “We’ll need to use radio, now. Shift to secure channel four.”

    Caine made the appropriate choice on his HUD display with an eye-directed cursor, bit down with his left molars to confirm the selection. “Radio check. Are you receiving?”

    “Loud and clear.” The inrushing of air had already crescendoed and was now diminishing rapidly. “Ready to dance?”

    Caine nodded, focused on the intense red dot that his weapon was projecting upon the interior door. Trevor manipulated the first knob again. This time, the door slid aside.

    A passage, side-lights receding away vanishing-point style. No blast of out- or in-rushing air, either; the craft still had an atmosphere. No sign of fog or fine snow drifting in midair; the humidity hadn’t frozen out, meaning that the internal heating hadn’t failed.

    Trevor stopped turning the knob. “Fresh life-support means the probability of survivors just got a lot higher. Cover high; I’m going in low.”

    “Understood. Go.”

    Trevor jackknifed around the edge of the doorway, swam aggressively into the passage beyond. He swooped low, hugged the floor tightly as he followed along the wall to his left.

    “What do you see?” Caine asked.

    “Doors up ahead, two on either side. Two rows of handles–the four-flanged variety–run the length of the walls.”

    “For zero-gee movement?”

    “That’s my guess. Can’t make out the end of the hall. Looks like a dark opening, but I can’t be sure. Damn. What I’d give for thermal imaging goggles right about now.”

    “Should I advance past you?”

    “No, just join me here. This space is too tight for a leapfrog advance.”

    And I’m not good enough in zero-gee to make it feasible, anyhow. Holding the gun in his right hand, Caine pushed with his feet and let his body straighten into a slow forward glide.

    Trevor hadn’t exaggerated. The corridor was not well-suited to human physiognomy. Only one and a half meters wide by two meters high, it felt cramped, vaguely reminiscent of the engineering access spaces aboard the Auxiliary Command module. The lights that receded toward the dark at the end of the corridor were more amber in color than white.

    “Caine, watch how you’re handling that gun. Don’t point the laser down the hall. We don’t want to announce ourselves.”

    Caine nodded his understanding and pushed himself down to a prone position alongside Trevor. “Now what?”

    “We go room by room. You cover, I enter.”

    Which seemed a wise plan. Trevor was ensuring that they would not leave any uncleared spaces behind them. But there was one problem with its execution. As they began low-drifting toward the first of the four doors, Caine secured the handgun’s safety and offered it back to Trevor, butt first. “Give me the pry-bar. I’ll enter the rooms. You cover.”

    “Nope. We’ve got the right resources in the right hands.”

    “Trevor, you’re much more qualified with this weapon than I am.”

    “And even more qualified in zero-gee maneuver. Did you have any classes in zero-gee hand-to-hand combat?”

    “One.”

    “Then you should know what I’m talking about. Every time you take a swing, you’re propelling yourself in a new direction. Same thing every time you block a blow or duck; every movement is acceleration. Two sudden moves and you’ll be too disoriented to do anything other than try to steady yourself.”

    “Okay, okay. Let’s get on with it, then.”

    The first door–which was almost perfectly square–did not respond to physical manipulation. Trevor tried the buttons on the panel alongside it. On the second try, the door slid aside.

    The room, illuminated by Caine’s helmet lights, was a hollow cube. Clutched in metal beams at the center was a radially symmetric collection of metal spheres, translucent tanks, and conduits.

    Trevor dove in, brought himself to a halt, peered in between the tanks and tubes, drifted back out. “I’m guessing that’s life support. No one home.”

    The next squarish door had irregular black smudges along two adjoined edges. Trevor ran a finger over the smudge, which erased but deposited itself on the tip of his glove. Carbon. Probably from an interior fire that had tried to lick around the door seal. The buttons on that entry refused to work and Trevor’s attempts to budge it were futile. His movements were hurried and annoyed as he drifted toward the next door.

    This opened onto what seemed to be a private room of some sort. However, just beyond the doorway, the ceiling and floor pinched closer to each other, so that an individual entering the room had less than one and a half meters of vertical space in which to operate. An apparent sleeping nook that sheltered a pair of berths that looked like a mix of mechanical cocoon and fluffy sleeping bag stood out from the far wall. Other objects–furniture and implements, Caine guessed–seemed to be secured for zero-gee.

    The structure and trappings of the fourth and final room were almost identical to the previous one. But here, there were telltale signs of use. A large object, akin to a narrow-necked inkwell with four radially symmetric depressions, had drifted into a corner of the room and floated there, unsecured. One cocoon-sleeping bag was neither fully open or closed, its lid hanging at an angle.

    “This doesn’t look like any warship I’ve ever seen,” muttered Trevor as they moved back to the doorway.

    Caine nodded. For a small craft, the design was too–well, indulgent: spacious sleeping compartments, sophisticated long-duration life-support recycling facilities, a comparatively roomy corridor, and of course, the tremendous fuel tankage capacity amidships. “No, I’d guess it was a recon vessel or a command nexus for drones on long-duration duty.”

    “Recon,” Trevor asserted. “Otherwise, some of the drones which pranged the cutter should have gone offline when Hazawa knocked this hull out of action. Unfortunately, that doesn’t answer the most important question: how many crew were on board for the battle?”

    “More important still, how many are left alive?”

    Trevor shrugged. “No way to know that, but it has enough accommodations for four–which doesn’t make sense. Two crewpersons are enough to handle any of the missions this ship might undertake.”

    “Military missions, yes. But what about paramilitary or civilian missions?”

    “I don’t follow you.”

    “What if your first comment was correct, that this ship wasn’t designed to be a military ship at all?”

    Trevor looked around the craft again, as though seeing it anew. “Could be. Possibly a packet or a survey craft.”

    “That’s what I’m guessing. Some kind of communications or research vessel, pressed into military service. Maybe it was even a civilian crew. Which might explain why we’re not seeing any of them.”

    “Because they’re hiding?”

    “Because they’re dead. If they weren’t used to military protocols, maybe they were operating without pressure suits when they got hit.”

    “Interesting theory, but there’s still atmosphere and heat on board. So what killed them?”

    “Maybe they were all in a chamber that depressurized; I don’t know. If any of the crew survived, why let us get this far in without trying an ambush?”

    Trevor’s forced grin was visible through his visor. “Let’s go find out. Slow approach, no helmet lights.”

    Caine silently counted off ten seconds as they drifted toward the opening at the end of the corridor. A faint glow within outlined large structures and confused silhouettes that resembled tangled spider webs. Trevor nodded to the handgun, pointed into the darkness, then tapped his helmet’s lights. Caine nodded, secured the weapon in a two-handed grasp, the targeting laser aimed just below the level of the doorway, poised to elevate swiftly to engage a target. Trevor aimed his helmet lights through the doorway, turned them on.

    Cables hung down from the ceiling, draped across an object that looked like a cross between a chaise lounge and a bathtub: evidently an Arat Kur acceleration couch. Beyond the bathtub-couch was another, similar shadow, except its upper surface was made uneven by a distinctly lumpy silhouette. If that couch was still occupied, its occupant was no longer moving. Beyond that, and framed by other debris from the ruined bridge, the stars glimmered faintly through a transparent panel that was a match in size and shape for the opaque cockpit blister they had noted on their approach.

    Trevor’s light swung slowly across the dense clusters of power conduits and narrower command cables that drifted in tangled spools and tentacles. “Looks like a convention of spider plants in there.” He snapped off the light.

    “Looks like a tomb to me.”

    Trevor nodded. “Yeah, I saw the silhouette in the far couch.”

    Caine kept staring into the darkness. “Of course, another one might still be in there.”

    “Possible, but why let us get so close? As you pointed out, the best time to ambush us was when we were moving up the corridor, trapped in a narrow space and without cover.”

    Caine squinted into the darker regions where the wires were thickest. “Still–”

    “Yeah, we still need to play it safe. But we’ve also got to finish checking out this bridge. Cover me.” Trevor swam into the room. His helmet lights swept back and forth across the clutter of cables and filaments like headlights roving along Spanish moss.

    “Talk to me, Trevor.”

    “Not much to talk about. I think this is a pretty large chamber, but I can’t be sure with this wiring all over the place.” Trevor drifted farther into the room, keeping his distance from the long, low Arat Kur acceleration couches and using the mass of cables for cover.

    “What about the controls?”

    “Can’t see anything from here. I’m going in to check out the first acceleration couch.”

    “Hold it, Trevor.”

    Trevor, already moving toward the long silhouette to his right, arrested his drift by grabbing a handful of cables. “Holding. What’s up?”

    “I don’t think you should move directly to the acceleration couch. Use the cables for concealment, approach obliquely. That also gives me a clear field of fire if anything is lurking near the couches themselves.”

    “Will do. Ready to start my move.”

    Caine reangled the ten-millimeter until its targeting laser was painting a small, red circle on the nearest acceleration couch. “Go ahead.”

    Trevor half rotated in space, swimming to the left and using handfuls of wiring to aid his progress–which halted suddenly. “Damn,” he muttered. His lights flickered through the sinuous shapes, painting shadow-snakes on the far wall.

    “What is it, Trevor?”

    “Almost got tangled. The cables are heavier in this part of the room, and I’m not seeing all of them. The helmet lights are too narrow-beam.”

    Yes, it’s pretty dark where he is. Damn nuisance, too. Every other room in the entire vessel had some illumination, if only the emergency lights. But on the bridge even those were dark–

    –Shit shit shit! “Trevor, kill your lights!”

    “What–?”

    “Kill your–!”

    The ambush didn’t unfold the way Caine expected. No shot in the dark: not even that much warning. One moment, Trevor’s floating silhouette was resuming its forward motion, left hand tugging a cable he’d wrapped around his wrist for purchase; the next, there was a blinding sputter of blue-white sparks just above his handhold. Trevor bucked backward, suddenly rigid, immobilized by the electric current that had raced up his arm and into his body.

    Out of the corner of his eye, Caine saw a darker shadow rise up from behind the second acceleration couch, the one probably occupied by an enemy corpse. He swung the ten-millimeter’s aimpoint over–but the shadow ducked down behind the couch again.

    Tricky little bastard: a faulty wire, rigged as a trap. Probably command activated and probably dozens of other wires similarly rigged. And figuring that out has cost a precious tenth of a second. So think–fast.

    Trevor’s paralyzed. Every second gives your enemy the opportunity to finish him off. The alien is probably armed, behind solid cover, and waiting for you to expose yourself. Meaning you’ve got no good options, except–

    Caine snapped back the ten-millimeter’s ammo feed selector with his thumb: set for armor-piercing rounds. He grabbed his emergency’s suit’s safety lanyard, slammed the carabineer clip across one of the cruciform handles on the wall beside him. As the clip snapped into place, he brought up the gun, eyes tracking with the laser aimpoint. He thumbed the propellant switch over to maximum as the red circle jumped up along and above the couch, then up a short stretch of wall–

    –keep that death-grip on the cable, Trevor. For just one more second–

    Caine squeezed the trigger when the red aimpoint reached the cockpit blister. The ten-millimeter Unitech bucked savagely, although the report was muffled by his helmet. The smooth surface of the cockpit blister star-cracked but did not shatter. Caine swung the aimpoint back to the center of the radiate fracture lines and squeezed the trigger again.

    He didn’t hear the second report, or rather, he couldn’t distinguish it. The cockpit panel blasted outward with a howl that swallowed the ten-millimeter’s feeble voice into the cacophonic cyclone of air, stray wires, and papers that maelstromed out into the vacuum of space.

    Caine felt himself yanked in that direction, then yanked to an equally abrupt halt: the suit lanyard and carabineer clip squealed under the pull of his vacuum-sucked mass. But they held.

    Trevor was still mostly motionless. The wrist-wrapped cable and tangled masses of wiring were holding him fast. However, the lump atop the second acceleration couch–a limp creature shaped like an oversized horseshoe crab-cockroach hybrid–went spinning out the breach in the cockpit blister. A moment later, a second, similar object, its outline made more vague by some sort of spacesuit, tumbled upward from behind the same couch, clutching frantically with six stunted ventral limbs. One of the rear limbs caught a slender wire, slipped, fumbled, clutched again–but weakly.

    As the rush of air started to diminish, Caine raised the ten-millimeter, centered the red aimpoint on the struggling horseshoe-crab shape–

    Nearby motion distracted him: Trevor had unwrapped his wrist from the cable mooring him in place. Caine’s breath caught. No, not yet! Grab another cable–just a few seconds more!

    But Trevor’s movements were purposeful, even though they were unsteady. His left arm dangling, he rode the rapidly weakening current of outgushing atmosphere toward the jagged hole in the cockpit blister. As he swept over the acceleration couches, he simultaneously kicked downward and reached up with his good arm. His feet connected with the top of the second couch and pushed him up toward the horseshoe-crab shape. Trevor slammed into it and tried to get a firm grip, but the decompressive currents began tugging him away. He was pulled feet-first toward the hole, but his right hand found a length of cable and locked on–even as his left hand reached toward the alien. The creature’s multiple appendages grabbed it violently, then fought for purchase on Trevor’s suit and helmet, and, once secure, began to contract. Forcefully.

    For one brief instant, Caine could not look away from the surreal scene of Trevor being hug-crushed by a crab-roach. Then reflex and adrenaline took over. Caine uncoupled the carabineer clip, and, with the decompressive flow almost gone, he aimed himself at Trevor and kicked at the wall.

    Too oblique and too hard. Caine went corkscrewing toward the floor, instead, hit the deck at an angle, and bounced. He swam through a slow, spastic cartwheel. Between frantic curses and calls to Trevor, his own breath echoed loudly in his ears. Only when he came to a stop–upside down and with his legs tangled in the hanging garden of cables–did he realize that Trevor was answering his calls.

    “Caine, I’m–okay. Take it–easy. Reorient–yourself.”

    “Reorient myself, hell! Christ, Trevor, what were you thinking? That damn thing might have killed you. Might still intend to.”

    “Caine, we–can’t h-hurt–it. It’s rigged–the bridge. Could have–r-rigged engineering. With a–bomb. Need it–alive.”

    Damn it, he’s right–and I’m a fool for not realizing the same thing. Caine kicked his legs free and somersaulted to turn himself over and reassume an up-down orientation that matched Trevor’s. He was vaguely aware that he had performed this tricky zero-gee maneuver with the surety of a pro.

    The alien’s six-limbed grasp on Trevor was tight, but not dangerously so. It was, however, immobilizing. One of the alien’s legs had wrapped around the upper part of Trevor’s left armpit, jamming that arm in an awkward, elevated position. Trevor’s right arm was pinned to his side by another appendage, and while his legs were free, they were out of reach from any surface against which to push.

    Oddly, the Arat Kur–for it was certainly not a Ktor or a Hkh’Rkh–seemed less capable of movement than Trevor. Although dominating the human with a grapple that would have been the envy of any collegiate wrestling star, the exosapient was motionless. Caine drifted closer cautiously, thumbed the ammunition selector back over to the setting that loaded antipersonnel rounds. He laid the gun against the side of the Arat Kur’s thorax.

    “Might as well–aim at–head.” There was a grunt of extra effort in Trevor’s voice.

    “As if we have any indication that’s where its brain is. And I thought you said you were all right. Your voice: you can hardly breathe. That damn thing is crushing you.”

    “No–not the–the reason.”

    “What do you mean, not the reason?”

    “Not the r-reason for my–voice. Shock;–everything stiff. Hurts. Hard to talk. Can’t m-m-move well, either.”

    Caine looked for and found clinical signs consistent with the aftermath of electrical trauma. A small, but high-speed tremor in Trevor’s right arm was visible even though the Arat Kur’s claws held it in a viselike grip. There was also a faint intermittent twitch in his friend’s left arm and more pronounced involuntary motions in his right leg. At least there was still movement, but that didn’t preclude more serious internal damage. “Trevor, read off your biomonitor values.”

    “Already–checked. Pulse and temperature high. All–all others, nominal. I’ll be–okay. J-just get–get this guy–off me.”

    Caine extended his arm, pushing himself a meter back from the tethered amalgam of human and alien. Detaching the Arat Kur necessitated an initial inspection of its physiology–or, rather, of its bulky, podlike vacuum suit.

    The fabric of the suit was tougher and more rigid than that used in human suits. Each limb covering was comprised of separate, well-articulated segments, making it unnecessary to ensure mobility by using more pliable materials. Reasonable. The Arat Kur body seemed to have no waist, no hips, no long limbs: in short, it was only capable of limited movement. With less of a demand for flexibility, Arat Kur garment designers could focus more on strength and durability.

    It also seemed that Arat Kur didn’t have heads, simply a cluster of sensory organs on their front-facing surface. Accordingly, the alien’s spacesuit was topped by a wide, shaded dome, flanked by a brace of small, highly distorting mirrors. Caine considered his own fun-house reflection for a moment. No head meant no neck. No way to reposition the visual sensory organs without repositioning the whole body to face the object to be observed–unless the visual field was expanded by using mirrors. Hmmm. I’ll bet these bastards spent a lot of evolutionary time worrying about, and being terrified by, threats from their rear. Possibly a useful tactical and psychological factor.

    Mounted just beneath the Arat Kur helmet-dome were two well-articulated sleeves, each ending in a set of cruciform mechanical claws. The claws were heavier and blunter than he would have expected in a tool-using species, but then he reconsidered his conclusion. Vacuum gloves turned even the slenderest human hand into a clumsy, bloated paw. The same could certainly be expected of alien space garments.

    There were a few external control surfaces visible, all of which were in recessed pits ringing the rim of the helmet-dome. Glyphs were visible under each touch-sensitive panel. More were printed on the small, dorsally-mounted life-support unit. All of which were absolutely meaningless to Caine.

    Not discovering anything particularly useful to the purpose of prying the Arat Kur apart from Trevor, Caine started with the most basic approach: brute force. However, repeated attempts to lever open the alien’s claws, or to cause its limbs to relax, were completely unproductive. “Maybe it’s died. Maybe rigor mortis has already set in.”

    Trevor’s voice, sounding somewhat more relaxed, disabused Caine of that notion: “No, it’s alive.”

    “How can you tell?”

    Trevor’s teeth chattered once before he replied. “It’s sh-shaking s-slightly.”

    Trevor sounded like he was growing cold, probably going into shock. And the exosapient was obstructing access to the manual overrides for Trevor’s suit thermostat–

    –Suit thermostat? Hmm. That might be a better way of getting the Arat Kur to move: fiddle around with the life-support unit on its suit. But adjusting the alien’s life-support pack might also kill it. The device was a mystery of orange and green lights, recessed indicators, and small access panels, all linked to the rear of the helmet-dome–

    Wait. The rear of the helmet dome. Of course. That gives me an even simpler option. Caine maneuvered to a position behind the exosapient, keeping his gun trained on the center of its thorax as he produced a pry bar from his own toolkit.

    “Wh-what are y-you doing, C-Caine?” Trevor did not sound good at all.

    “Conducting a psychological warfare experiment.” Keeping the handgun tight against the exosapient’s midriff, Caine ran the pry bar along the center of the alien’s life-support unit. Then again, slowly, softly from the bottom up to the top. Let’s see how you feel about having a hostile alien constantly tapping and bumping at your back.

    There was no immediate reaction. Might be time to increase the implied threat from behind. On the next pass of the pry bar, Caine let it graze the rear edge of the helmet-dome.

    The exosapient’s limbs flexed convulsively, released Trevor in its attempt to scrabble away along other, nearby wires.

    But, anticipating that, Caine clung to the alien’s back. Avoiding the grabbing legs, he pulled himself forward until the top half of his visor was level with the alien’s helmet dome. He still couldn’t see anything inside; the material was too dark. No matter; obviously, the Arat Kur could see outward. Well enough, at least, to make out the ten-millimeter handgun that Caine laid against the helmet-dome. The alien’s movements became more frantic. Caine tapped the muzzle against the dome twice and then left it pointing directly inward. The alien’s movement ended abruptly; all six legs went limp. Caine smiled. It was nice to know that some concepts–such as a loaded gun–were capable of transcending even the barriers of species and language.

    He looked over toward Trevor, who was making adjustments to his suit’s life-support unit. “What’s wrong?”

    “Just setting the temperature a few degrees higher.”

    Caine bound their prisoner with lengths of cable and wiring. Meanwhile, Trevor haltingly moved to hunch in front of what appeared to be the wreck’s central computer console.

    “Anything interesting?”

    “G-God, no. This writing looks l-like tortured s-spa-spaghetti trying to m-mate with cock-eyed d-d-dominoes. Be-besides, we don’t speak their language. That’s why-why I h-h-had to sa-save the little b-bastard. Whoev-ever he is.”

    “An Arat Kur?” ventured Caine. “We’ve seen the Hkh’Rkh already, and the Ktor live in those big tanks on treads. And no other species seemed hostile at Convocation.”

    “Arat Ku-Kur sounds r-right.”

    Caine helped Trevor to drift away from the enemy ship’s bridge console. “So, we’ve caught an Arat Kur. Maybe. But whatever he is, you’re right: we have to find a way to communicate with him. Until we do, we can’t even dock this wreck with the Auxiliary Command module to pool the two vehicles’ resources. And without those combined resources, we’re just a pile of a junk heading into deep space.”

    Caine stared past Trevor’s tremoring nod and trembling shoulder. The trussed exosapient was once again motionless. Maybe even smug. And perhaps it had a right to be. The alien might be their prisoner, but they were now hostages to its knowledge.