We took Ophir with us. Fiori pulled on her suit gloves and held out her hands. “Give him to me. A little pee won’t hurt me.”
It was more than a little pee, but I handed him over as instructed. He settled on Fiori’s hip and clung to her suit with two tight fists, his eyes still enormous and fear-filled.
I ignored how that made me feel. “Just hurry,” I urged. “I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.” Which was a flat out lie. I’d felt hemmed-in since I stepped aboard the Ige Ibas. I was anxious to leave.
“Lyssa, status update,” Dalton murmured.
“Nothing,” she said calmly. “It’s as empty out here as it was when we arrived.”
It wasn’t reassuring.
“Still jumpy, boss?” Dalton asked softly.
“More than ever,” I admitted and pushed on Fiori’s shoulder to get her moving. We crossed the maze-like engineering compartment, stepping around banks of mechanized and motorized whatevers. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for where things sat. At least on the Lythion there were labels and heads-up displays, along with full step-by-step explanations about how to fix things. And there was always Lyssa with her construction bot strength to tackle the heavier jobs.
I climbed the steep metal steps ahead of Fiori, my shriver out. “Hurry,” I repeated, as we rounded the railing at the top of the stairs and moved down the central corridor.
Every speaker on our suits and the ones inside our helmets blasted out a warning klaxon at full volume. Ophir screamed and I winced and put my spare hand over my ear.
“Incoming! Incoming!” Lyssa shouted at us. “They appeared out of nowhere! No warning! They’re right on top of us!”
“Run!” I screamed and pounded down the corridor.
The two wolves stayed with me, whining at the loud noise, which had to be painful for them to listen to with their sensitive hearing.
“Shut the alarm off!” I screamed.
“I’m coming in!” Lyssa shouted back. “They’re fast! I’ve never seen anything like it!”
The klaxon shut off abruptly.
“Analyze later!” I shouted back. I turned into the entry foyer. The two airlock doors were still locked open, for which I was profoundly grateful. I ran at them, fumbling for my helmet. Then I gave up on it. No time.
I paused at the edge of the outer door. The tunnel was still in place, the lights around the doorframe on the shuttle glowing green—but I didn’t need the lights to know the tunnel was still there. We would be experiencing explosive decompression if it wasn’t.
I waved Dalton and Fiori on. “I’ll steer Vara!”
Fiori didn’t hesitate. She sprinted through the two lock doors and launched herself across the tunnel with a grunt of effort, with Ophir clinging to her, his face buried in her shoulder. She sailed across, letting inertia do the work.
Dalton and Darb pounded after her. Dalton thrust his fingers into the fur behind Darb’s neck as he pushed off with a powerful thrust of his legs.
I didn’t wait to watch them make the crossing. I gripped Vara by the scruff and hurled her out into the tunnel and pushed off myself. I dared to glance to the right and then the left. The unnamed blue sun was lifting up over the edge of the planet behind us. Its cold light glinted off a sight I will never forget.
The ship was unlike anything I’d ever seen, and in my lifetime, I have seen hundreds of starships, some of them highly experimental and futuristic. This ship looked like it had been created from the ground up by deliberately eschewing every sensible ship design decision.
I had no time to stare at it. I got a single, startled glimpse of unfocused details, including the huge size of the thing—it was easily three times the size of the Lythion—then the nose of the shuttle hid it from my view.
Vara scrabbled uselessly with her paws, trying to paddle her way across the tunnel. We were barely a meter from the lip of the shuttle door.
“Danny!” Dalton cried and thrust out his right arm to point in the direction I hadn’t been looking.
I snapped my head around.
A small ship, so small I suspected it to be a one-man fighting craft, hovered thirty meters away, sitting between the Ige Ibas and the shuttle. A dozen more of the little craft were screaming in to form up behind it.
The front of the craft was a clear, flat canopy, giving the pilot an unobstructed three-sixty degree view of what lay ahead of him.
And I could see him, too. Or her.
Or it.
It was bipedal and stood upright, with two arms reaching toward controls in front of it. I couldn’t see what it had for hands. The entire creature was encased in a shiny carapace that glinted very dark blue in the light from the rising sun. Its head was truly alien, with an elongated snout that ended in a circular mouth that showed a red interior, and teeth around the edge in two concentric circles. Sharp, angular spines rose up in a line over the high head, and disappeared behind. The eyes were enormous and blank.
The thing worked the controls in front of it while I floated with my mouth open, my heart pistoning overtime.
Something shot out from a maw in the craft’s fuselage beneath the front window, trailing a line.
I didn’t know what the thing or the line were for, but primitive instincts gibbered in fear. I could feel my teeth trying to chatter.
The thing at the end of the line had intelligence. I watched it change directions as I tried to paddle my way over to the shuttle, just like Vara. I’d lost all good sense. I tried to pull myself together, to act smart. But all I wanted to do was get inside the shuttle, shut the door and curl up in the corner. Maybe wrap my arms over my head like Ophir.
The little boy was screaming and pounding his fists against Fiori’s shoulder. His eyes were so wide and so filled with primordial fear that a clear border of white showed around the irises.
The thing on the end of the line pushed through the molecular barrier and I held my breath, waiting for the air to evaporate, but the barrier held.
The thing shot toward Fiori, who had just reached the ship, and whipped itself around her ankle. The line snapped taut, jerking her away from the ship.
Now I knew what the thing was for.
As soon as Fiori felt the tug on her ankle, she wrenched Ophir away from her and threw him at the open door of the shuttle. The little boy sailed through the meter of space until the gravity of the shuttle caught him and sent him rolling across the interior floor.
Dalton gripped the edge of the door with one hand and shoved Darb into the pull of the gravity. Then he slapped his other hand over Fiori’s wrist and hauled against the pull of the line.
I had nothing to hang on to, to push Vara forward. All we could do was float slowly toward the shuttle. Any attempt to swim faster would push us backward.
Vara yipped and growled in high, frightened notes, which didn’t help stop my teeth from chattering.
Fiori reached for Dalton with her other hand, her eyes as huge as Ophir’s. She was being drawn inexorably backward by the line. The alien controlling it watched us struggle with what looked like utter disinterest.
“Nearly there!” Lyssa cried from the speakers.
Vara was slightly ahead of me and the shuttle’s gravity field extended a half meter from the ship itself. Vara scrambled as she felt the pull of gravity, trying to move faster.
I was close enough now that I could reach out and grab Dalton’s boot, and haul myself up the length of his body. I hooked my knee over his, anchoring myself. “Don’t let go,” I told him.
“Hurry,” he said through gritted teeth. The tendons in his neck were standing out as he strained to hang on to Fiori.
I unhooked the torrent shriver and raised it. “Everyone, be ready. The tunnel is going to collapse.”
I aimed right at the motherfucker’s face. He had to see what I was doing, but he didn’t seem concerned about it.
I didn’t hesitate. I fired, holding the trigger down, so the shriver fired continuously.
The molecular barrier collapsed with a popping sound.
Wind screamed at us from the interior of the shuttle, before the barrier could form over the open doorway and hold it in.
A pad—I think it was mine—whipped through the door with the speed of a percussion bullet and shot passed my arm.
I felt the sharp sting and even sharper cold of absolute vacuum.
I blew out my breath—one of the hardest things a spacer had to learn to do, because it went against the survival instinct.
The alien ship lit up with blue fire dancing over every surface. The pilot convulsed.
The craft drifted sideways, burning merrily.
The line around Fiori’s leg grew slack. Her head lay inside the barrier, her body hung from the door.
I shoved her through the door, and she scrambled away from it on her hands and knees.
Dalton gripped my elbow and hauled me into the ship.
As soon as I had gravity under me, I jammed my boot on the floor and pulled him in after me.
I shut the door as soon as he was inside and threw myself into the copilot chair.
I felt dizzy from the exposure to vacuum, but fear kept me grounded enough to do what had to be done.
“Lyssa!” I cried.
“I’m nearly to you!”
Fiori leaned over the back of my chair, pawing at my arm.
“I’m trying to get us out of here!” I wrenched my arm away from her.
“You’re bleeding! Lemme at it. I have to staunch it.”
“Dalton!” I shouted. If I couldn’t get us out of here, he had to.
“On it!”
He didn’t slide into the chair. He leapt over the back of it and dropped into it and instantly grabbed the controls.
I tried to peer around the corner of the windscreen to spot the Lythion, and saw once more the bigger alien ship.
It was aglow with unearthly light, which ran over and along it, to gather at the front of it.
The light formed into a ball which launched itself at ferocious speed right at the Lythion.
“Watch out, Lyssa!” I cried, my hand splaying on the screen, as if I could reach out and stop the thing.
The Lythion jigged. I can’t describe it better than that. Lyssa was the ship, after all. She could duck and sidestep the way humans could.
The ball of greenish red fire passed over the top of the Lythion.
The mother ship fired a ball at us, too. I saw it coming, like a nemesis bearing down upon us.
“Shit! Dalton!”
He did almost the same thing as Lyssa. He jigged, using the shuttle’s atmospheric maneuvering jets to drop us vertically “down”.
The fireball passed over our heads. I watched with sick fascination as it struck the Ige Ibas…and passed straight through it. A ring of fire on the fuselage the size of the ball framed a view of the planet beyond, the rocky surface now bathed in dawn light.
“Lyssa, fire back!” I screamed. “Rail guns! Everything!”
The two guns on the top of the Lythion opened up, raining fire upon the alien ship.
One gun tracked sideways and I saw small balls of flame flare up, then extinguish as vacuum put out the flames. Lyssa was swatting at the little flyers, too.
That gave me a better idea of the true size of the mother ship. It was enormous.
“Coming in hot and hard,” Lyssa warned. “Dalton, stay very still.”
Dalton slapped the dashboard, shutting everything down, then fired the maneuvering jets for a second, to bring us to a complete standstill.
Through the screen, over our heads, the Ige Ibas burned from the inside out.
The mother ship was turning to face us once more, but as it lined us up in its sights, the Lythion rose up between us, its flank facing us. Lyssa had the freight ramp down, and the inside of the freight bay yawned.
“She isn’t…” I breathed.
“I think, yeah, she is,” Dalton said. “This is going to be tight,” he added.
“The shuttle won’t fit!”
“It will and she knows that, or she wouldn’t try it,” Dalton said calmly.
Both rail guns had swung around and were firing almost continuously at the mother ship on the other side of the Lythion. I watched the brilliant twin streams of deathly energy trace their way across the blackness and wanted to cheer.
Then the Lythion loomed up over us and I lost sight of the rail guns and saw that the landing bay was swallowing us up like that long-ago ancient whale had once swallowed ships whole.
I bent to peer through the very far corner of the shuttle screen, for we were being sucked into the landing bay sideways. I spotted the ramp closing and, beyond that, the motion of stars through the sky as Lyssa got the Lythion moving even before the ramp properly shut.
Dalton put the shuttle down on the floor of the bay with a slight thud and shut the engines down.
The silence was thick, broken only by everyone breathing very hard.
“Now, will you for fuck’s sake stay still so I can get this?” Fiori demanded, tugging at my arm.
I lifted up my arm and looked at it. Blood was everywhere, and more of it oozed through the two centimeter trough that had been gouged out of my upper arm. “Damn, I’m really bleeding,” I muttered. “I thought it was the vacuum making me faint.”