---

Caraval gave a sharp wave to Pirra.  Bullets were about to fly, and he didn’t want her anywhere near this.

Instead, she floated towards them.

“I understand your pain,” she said.

One of the Hev snarled at her.  “Quiet!  We know you received favoritism, getting to return!  No others who went in came back – so why you?”

Their eyes went to Caraval, and he hoped to hell Pirra knew what she was doing.

“Your Captain didn’t want to let me back in,” Pirra said.  “He tried to lock me out.  But it would have been a diplomatic incident.  But I am lucky – I did not get a secondary infection.”  She patted her undersuit.  “This protected me – and so did my main suit, which was infected and I had to abandon at the last minute.”  She hesitated a small moment, then continued.

“I saw the others in there.  They were not so lucky.  I’m so very sorry.”

Caraval feared that their anger would burn even brighter.  But he saw some of the fire in their eyes fade.

“They are our friends and family,” the leader of the mutineers said.  “We just want to see them again.  Or . . . at least give them proper farewells.”

“I know,” Pirra said softly.  “But it can’t be.  I saw them, and . . . they’re not suffering anymore.  They decided to take control of their fates.  It was not easy, and it was not fair.  But I’m sure they did it not only to spare themselves worse fates – but because they care about you, their friends and family.  They knew you would feel like you must help them, but they took that choice away, to make it easier to say goodbye.”

The leader of the mutinous Hev bowed his head.  “My mate was like that,” he agreed.  “She . . . she was always selfless.”

Others hung their heads, and while Hev did not shed tears as humans did, Caraval could tell their sorrow was deep and sincere.

“I’m very sorry for your losses,” Caraval told them, interjecting himself into the conversation.  “Right now, we need to focus on saving the rest of your people.  I’m afraid there’s only one way we can do that – by detaching that section of the ship.  I don’t know of any other way.”

Captain K’Raaiia stepped forward.  “It is with great reluctance I agree to this,” he said.  His voice was blustery, but Caraval thought there was at least some sincerity in it.  “We shall detach the section, and upon our return from this trip we will raise a monument to the bravery of the Thousands Who Sacrificed.”

“You will . . . with your own money?” the head of the mutineers asked.

Caraval caught the pointed question and tried not to smile.  K’Raaiia’s face went through a myriad of emotions, anger not the least among them.  But he knew his position was not one of strength.

“With my own funds,” he agreed.

Caraval cautiously moved forward.  “Captain, how do we detach that section?”

The Hev considered a moment.  “It was an addition but we never intended to remove it.  However . . . we never properly finished its connection.  There are no deep ties to our vessel.  If we break a dozen connectors, it should simply drift free.”

Caraval noted that such a weak connection was incredibly illegal in Sapient Union space, but didn’t bring it up.

“We have a few charges that might help, but I’m not sure if they’ll be enough.  I can have teams go to each site-“

“No,” the head of the mutinous group said.  “They are our people – we will do it.”

Caraval bowed his head to them.  “I understand.  We cannot get the ship moving or communications back up until we get it off, so time is of the essence.  The Craton may be in trouble, and we can’t be sure the Leviathan won’t come back this way.”

“We will waste no time,” the Captain said.  He began barking orders to his crew.  Caraval saw some hostility to him remaining, but his crew did follow his commands.

Caraval moved back towards Pirra, who seemed lost in thought.

“You all right?” he asked.

She was startled out of her reverie.  “Yes, Commander.”

“Good work there,” he said.  “Even if you ignored orders.”

“I won’t make a habit of it,” she said with an attempt at a smile.  It wasn’t normal for her kind, and looked wan as well as forced.

“Glad to hear it.  Now . . . this time go back to our ship for real and wait there.”

“Aye, sir.”

He caught her arm as she turned.  “Have it prepped and ready.  If something goes wrong with this blast, then we’re going to have to get out of her fast.”

---

< Part 18 | Part 20 >

---

“We have power!” Tred cried.

Hev cheered as the lights came back on.  They were dim, by human standards, but significantly better than darkness.

Caraval looked up at the lights, wondering what they had cost.  “Good.  Get me communications and sensors so we can inform the Craton.”

He turned away, clicking onto Pirra’s channel.  “Lieutenant Pirra, are you there?”

There was silence – as there had been for some time.

They had all volunteered to go into the jaws of death on a routine basis.  He always knew there was a chance that some of them might not make it home.  Just part of the job.  They chose to do it anyway so more people would get to make it home.

But would it have to end even worse for her?  Would it have to end on an alien ship, not even her own, in a fate worse than death?

How could he tell his best friend that he’d sent his wife to that?

A message came.  A single word.  “Commander?”

His heart was pounding in his chest.  “Pirra?  Report status!”

“Situation under control, Commander.”  Something in her voice seemed to crack.  “I think I’m okay.”

Caraval felt a great release of tension in his chest.  “Get down here.  We’re aiming to get in touch with the Craton.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Pirra?”

“Yes?”

“Good job.”

Caraval broke the communication, and he heard Tred’s voice cry out in alarm.

“Sir!” he said.  “We’ve got the Craton on scopes.”

“And?”

The man looked at him with eyes as wide as saucers.  “She’s in trouble, sir.  The Leviathan . . . I think it’s awake.”

---

“Prepare to launch the shuttle,” Brooks ordered.

A tense energy filled the bridge as the order was carried out.  Everyone aboard felt great trepidation mixed with hope – a heady mixture that could break down even the strongest of discipline, in the Captain’s experience.

Word had just been sent that Cutter had finished his work modifying the shuttle.  As soon as he and his crew had evacuated the hangar, they could launch.

“Crew out, sir.”

“Send it.”

He felt the hum of power through the floor; the bridge was in the middle of a triangle of the three massive magnetic accelerators that the ship used for launching shuttles – or kinetic projectiles.

Even with all the shielding between them and the bridge, one could feel when they powered up.  They were just that massive.

They all felt the shuttle move through the tube – or rather, the magnetic coils pulsing and moving.

“Shuttle away!”

Brooks clicked on his comm.  “Cutter, when the shuttle is at an appropriate distance, begin broadcasting.”

“Understood sir.  System will start automatically at minimum safe distance.  T-minus one minute and fifteen seconds.”

A counter appeared in his vision, and he watched it tick down.  As it hit zero, Cutter’s voice came through again.

“Beginning krahteon emissions.  Krahteon field stabilized.  Distraction online, Captain.”

“Show me,” Brooks said, leaning forward.

An image of the shuttle – a basic, boxy thing – appeared on-screen.  It was rotating in a way that would have made any passengers in it sick.  If they hadn’t already been pasted by the high-speed launch.

“Show us a false-color image of the emissions.”

The image changed, showing the fields of exotic energy.  Invisible to the eyes of most life-forms, in this view they resembled an aurora erupting from the shuttle.  Even at the low power that the shuttle’s small generators could manage, the craft itself was dwarfed.

“It’s beautiful,” he heard someone say softly, but didn’t catch who.

“Cut our own krahteon emissions,” Brooks ordered.  He looked over.  “Is there any change with the Leviathan?”

“Keeping sensors at absolute minimum, Captain,” Urle said.  “Give me a few moments, the system has to piece the data together.”

The transhuman’s head snapped up.  “It’s changing course!”

The tension broke; a cheer went up from the crew pits, and Brooks himself could not help but smile a little.

He let it go for a moment, before calling for silence.  “Everyone, return to your stations.  This isn’t over yet.  Sensors, continue to monitor.  In the meantime, attempt to contact the Hev ship and-“

“Sir!”  Urle’s voice contained a fear that he could not hide.  “Sir, the Leviathan is still following us.”

“It didn’t change course?” he asked.

“It . . . it did.  We’re getting a double reading, it’s like there are now two of them!”

“Not two,” Kell said, speaking for the first time he’d heard since their talk earlier.  “It is one, but is in two places.”

Urle let out a sound of anger that turned to hissing static.  “That’s not possible!”

“It does as it will,” Kell replied.

“Did we end our krahteon emissions?” Brooks asked.

“Yes, sir.  We’re running as dark as we can without shutting down everything.  It shouldn’t even know we’re here,” Urle replied.

“It is not stupid,” Kell said.  “It saw through this trick.”

“Kell, you said this would work,” Urle said.  “Damn it, man!”

“I said it could work.  I still believe it could have.  It simply turns out that it did not.”

Brooks looked to the being.  “Do you have any other suggestions, Ambassador?”  Blaming it would do them no good, and he had a feeling in his gut that Kell was key to the situation.

“I will inform you if I have any,” the Shoggoth replied.  “But I fear we do not have much time.”

Brooks looked back to the screen.  “Project the Leviathan as best we can.”

The image appeared, and he was shocked to see that it appeared larger than earlier.  Their zoom, he confirmed, was the same.  It was closing the distance.

“It’s closer,” Urle said.

“Sensors confirm, Captain – it is gaining on us,” Cenz noted.  “We’re collecting what data we can, but as with anything related to a Leviathan it’s not making a lot of sense beyond the obvious.”  The electronic screen that was his face showed worry and concentration.

Brooks could only look to the dimly-outlined shape of the eye of the Leviathan.  It was fixed forward, perhaps it was so large it could not even move, as with some animals.

But then, it was a Leviathan; a beast that obeyed only what laws of nature suited it.

That eye, though.  It was a trick of his mind to think it, but it felt like it was looking at him.

He forced his attention off it, going to his crew.  He panned over each and every being in his view.  They, too, were staring at the screen, at the Leviathan.

They felt it, too, he realized.  Each and every person who saw that eye felt it was looking at them.

“How long do we have until we are within its Reality Break Shadow?” he asked.

It was critical; crossing the RBS was the point where minds began to break, where matter began to change.  Where any ship would soon meet its end.

Neither Urle nor Cenz answered.

“Officers!” Brooks snapped sharply.  Urle jumped, and Cenz’s face took on a shocked expression.

“My apologies, Captain,” Urle muttered.  “We . . . we predict we are twenty minutes from entering the outer edge of its shadow.”  He did a double-take.  “That . . . yes, that’s right.”

“The shadow on this one is approximately twice the radius of that of any previously-discovered Leviathan,” Cenz noted.  “By the seas, this one dwarfs them all.”

He put Cutter into the channel.  “Can we increase speed?”

“Negative.  Engines already at highest limit due to venting.  Plasma will restore over time, but not enough to increase velocity.”

Brooks hunched forward in his seat, looking into the eye of the Leviathan.  “Begin evacuation of the civilians, and prepare for an emergency transmission to the nearest relay.  We have to warn Earth.”

Urle nodded, though grimly.  “Aye, sir.”

“What is the significance of this?” Kell asked.

Cenz answered.  “Our engine moves us in sublight, through zerospace – and allows us to send messages faster than light – but we cannot do all three at the same time.  Unless . . . we overload the engines.  They will become disabled, but we can send one transmission.”

“And then?”

Cenz hesitated before answering.  “And then we are dead in space.”

---

< Part 16 | Part 18 >

---

Pirra wondered if the Hev in here would be hostile to her; sometimes, beings altered were hostile to anything and everything, according to old spacers’s stories.  She’d never known if there was any truth to them and she had hoped never to learn.

Thousands had been trapped in here, they’d said, but those few she saw were in corners, facing the bulkheads.  One was gnashing his teeth furiously, but biting nothing.  Others were pulling their fur out in clumps like rad-victims.  All of them showed heavy signs of alteration, elements of their bodies changed in ways that defied description.

She tried not to look at them.  She had a mission to accomplish . . . and she felt a fear of looking at them that bordered on superstitious.

Two lefts . . .  She took them and then took the right.  Looking up at the ceiling for the hole upwards, she began to see the corruption in the ship itself.

The walls were beaded with strange bumps that she felt a sudden fear would open and look at her with metallic eyes.  Nothing happened, but she took every effort to not touch any surface.

“Drone 2, where are you?” she asked, looking around.  It wasn’t here, and they were not supposed to stray far unless ordered.

A beep from behind alerted her and she looked back.

The drone was struggling to keep up.  She wasn’t sure why, until it began to spin.

One of its side thrusters had altered.  It flowed like a liquid, sloshing back and forth, and each time it sloshed away from the main body it seemed to strain, as if trying to pull itself free.

The liquid took a form, like limbs trying to grasp for something, anything.

Before she could give it an order, the liquid seemed to crystallize and shot out to adhere to a bulkhead like a web.  It began to pull the doomed drone towards the surface.

Electronic alerts flashed in her vision, telling her the myriad malfunctions the drone was suffering.

She felt like she was watching a death.

But she couldn’t spare the time.

“Third hole in the ceiling,” she muttered, consciously wiping out all the alerts and removing the drone from her system.  It shut down behind her.

Seeing the hole, and how corrupted it was, she was dismayed at its narrowness.  Could she even get through that without touching anything?

“Drone 1, go through and confirm there’s a path.  Do not touch any surfaces.”

The drone began towards the entrance, and she saw that it could no longer fly straight.

It was the air in here, she realized.  It wasn’t as bad as being in contact with a solid, but it wasn’t helping.  And the deeper they went, the worse the effect was getting.

Looking down the hall, she realized it extended on and on in a way that was not right.  It twisted and turned.  No ship corridor did that, and no ship had a reason to even have a corridor this long.

Was it already affecting her?  She couldn’t know, not yet.

The drone went up into the hole and beeped that it was clear.

Looking up, she thought that if she tucked her arms and legs she could clear it.  Holding her breath, she jetted up as straight as she could.

It was only three meters, but it felt like a kilometer.

As her head came out the other side, she saw the door to the computer room – closed.  But it didn’t matter, as it had turned into a web of frail-looking strands that outlined every shape of the old door.  They had the color of old dried bones.

She’d have to break it.

“Drone 1, cutting laser.  Take this down.”

The drone went at it, keeping back and using jets of air to push each piece of loose debris away from itself and her.

A crackle came on her comm.  It was distorted.  But she could hear two words clearly;

“Pirra . . . hurry . . .”

Her heart fluttered faster in her chest.  “Drone 1, ram the door and break it,” she ordered.

The drone obeyed without question, but she still didn’t feel good about it.

Moving back to avoid the debris, the drone obediently smashed through the door – it was as dry and weak as it looked.  After the first few hits the drone seemed unharmed, but she realized that it was slowly turning the same color as the webs.  Its shape was changing, becoming pointed and slowly swelling at the end until it looked almost like a femur.

Then it shattered on the door.

Letting out a curse, she jetted back to dodge the chunks of door and drone that scattered away from the area.

She felt something hit her boot, but didn’t see damage.  But it might be enough to start to alter it.

Shooting forward, she saw that a hole just large enough had been created.  Tucking her limbs, she ducked through into the room.

The room was an unnatural horror, and even looking at it made her eyes hurt.  She felt tears well in them, and she tried to focus on the computer core.

It was hardly any better to look at; it was a mass of flesh where it had once been metal.  Bulges that pulsed unnaturally covered it, like some sort of organ system.  Liquid moved through arteries that she thought might have once carried coolant.

Looking quickly through the instructions for purging the core, she let out another curse.

“Useless!” she hissed.

There was no interface left, she couldn’t possibly begin a safe shutdown!  There wasn’t even a hard-eject button.

Her comm crackled again, and she listened for anything important, but what she did hear curdled her blood.

It was moaning, it was sobbing.  It was white noise that her brain nonetheless imagined were sounds of pain.  There was no intelligence in it, but somehow she felt like she was hearing pain.  A loss, ending in a quiet whimper.

“It’s just white noise,” she bit out, to hear something in contrast to that horrible sound.

Or was it just noise?

She looked around and saw that there were windows in the room that were intact.  Standing in stark contrast to the metal that had succumbed to the unnatural changes, the windows seemed near perfect.

She moved nearer one, and saw that they were pitted and had large cracks, but appeared otherwise unaltered.

And behind that window she found out where the missing Hev had gone.

---

< Part 14 | Part 16 >

---

“Commander Caraval,” Pirra radioed.

After a moment, the man’s voice crackled in her ear.  “How is it?” he asked.

“Private channel,” she told him, and then relayed what she had just learned.  She had closed her helmet and opaqued her visor to outside view.  Dessei didn’t have much in the way of lips to read, but she wasn’t going to risk it, all the same.

“The rest of the crew don’t know, Commander.  I get the feeling the Captain is unpopular with them and he doesn’t want them to think the situation is as bad as it is.”

The Commander was quiet a few long moments before talking again.  “That’s not the only thing we’ve learned.  Tred’s found that this was originally a pretty good ship that the Hev bought and built their own vessel around.  It has its own zerodrive and a class-9 AI running it.”

“A class-9?  That’s beyond most biological beings.  It’s not even legal in the Sapient Union,” she hissed.

“More practically, it’s the source of their problem right now.  Not many know this, but the better an AI, the more prone to tenkionic corruption by just this sort of thing.”

She put the pieces together.  “So when they hit the Leviathan their AI was corrupted and that caused the shutdown.”

“Right.  So before we can get the power back on, we have to purge the main AI core.  It’s not exactly functional, but it’s not going to let anything run until we get that sorted.”

“Can we send in drones?”

“They’re not viable in this scenario,” Caraval replied.  “We’ll some along, but a bio has to go in.  Only way to be sure.”

She didn’t know why, and she didn’t need to.  She just knew what she had to do.

“I’ll take care of it, then.  I can get directions from the Ambassador with the least translations involved – should give me the best shot.”

Caraval hesitated.  “I’m not trying to send you on every dangerous task here, Pirra-“

“I’m best-suited, Commander.  Comes with the job,” she replied.  “Just send me the instructions on how to purge the system.”

Turning, she looked to the Ambassador.

“I need to reach the AI core,” she told him.  “We have to purge it before we can get the ship functional again.”

He bared his teeth and let out a growl, something she fortunately knew was a sign of shock and dismay.  “That . . . is in the barricaded section,” he said.

Feeling her heart beat faster, she kept her face impassive.  “Understood.  Can the Captain let me in there?”

The Captain was watching them carefully, noticing that they were conversing.  “[You get translators working?]” he demanded.

“No,” the Ambassador told him.  “They have to purge the computer to get things working.”

He snarled.  “[No!  No touching that!  Too sensitive!  Too much private information.]”  He whirled on Pirra.  “[You want everything from us, don’t you?  All our secrets!]”

She couldn’t hide the scorn on her face.  “Tell the Captain that if he wants his ship to be more than a drifting hulk then we have to purge his illegal core.  He can come watch me flush it down the toilet if he wants, but it’s happening either way.”

The Ambassador translated her words – carefully altering a few here and there to take out her rudeness.

“They know it’s an illegal AI,” he added.

The Captain’s face looked stricken, and for a moment Pirra wished she did have a sidearm.  His hand had gone to his own, and she knew that the legal ramifications of his AI could be severe.  But he didn’t draw the weapon.

“Tell him that as long as he helps us purge it, we can kill any charges.  No one really even needs to know he had it,” she added.

After N’Keeea translated that, the Captain’s look softened a little.  “[We got it that way]!” he added.  “[Bought second-hand, didn’t know it was illegal!]”  He let out a sigh punctuated with clicks of his sharp teeth.  “[But computer is in closed-off section.  Too dangerous to reach.]”

“I’m going in anyway,” she said.  “I just need him to open the door and give me directions.  Please impress upon him that without doing this, we absolutely cannot get this ship moving.”

The Captain nodded.  He did not say anything, but reached up to a control panel.

“I’ve seen the computer core,” the Ambassador said.  “It’s not hard to find.  You simply go straight down the corridor, take two lefts, then a right and then the third hole in the ceiling.  There’s a large security door, however . . . it seems that the crew often leaves it open.  If it’s open you can go right into the computer room.  If not – I’m not sure, as the system will not allow it to be opened.”

“I’ll just have to hope it’s open, then.”

She carefully recorded his directions, hoping she didn’t get lost.  Summoning two drones, she hoped she could use them for any direct interactions.

“I’ve got it,” she said.  Using maneuvering thrusters to move nearer the door, she nodded to the Captain.

“I’ll be back in five minutes,” she told them.

The Captain had hold of a heavy lever to manually open the door.  He forced it and she jetted in, trying to touch nothing, not even the floor.

The door closed behind her.

---

< Part 13 | Part 15 >

---

“We are so glad to have you aboard,” the Hev Ambassador said to Pirra.

Pirra was shocked at how good his skill at her language was – almost like a native speaker.

She trilled back.  “Ambassador, we’re glad to be able to help.  Will the Captain be all right with our tech crew taking a look at your systems?”

The Ambassador spoke briefly with the Captain.  He was slightly disgruntled; he had quickly realized that the Response Team’s translators were picking up his words, but he still could not understand them.

“He agrees.  He asks specifically if someone can look at his translation unit.”

“Absolutely,” Pirra promised.

The rest of the team had caught up, several man-handling generators in the zero-g to try and get at least some systems functioning.  While Caraval had set up a basic base in the hangar they’d arrived at, to get much access to the Hev systems they’d have to go deeper.  No system was going to grant full acess in the same area that anyone could potentially land at.

“Tred, get working on that engine system,” Caraval ordered.  “Get things up and running ASAP.”

The man nodded nervously and plugged in, while the commander came over to Pirra and the two Hev.

“Lt. Commander, this is Ambassador N’Keeea,” she said, gesturing.  “And Captain K’Raaiia.”

“Ambassador, Captain.”  The man stuck out a hand to both in turn.

It was a very odd gesture to a Hev, bordering on insulting, and the Captain glared at him, while the Ambassador took his hand and shook it lightly.

“We’re going to – with your permission – try to get your systems running again as best we can.  The Leviathan is currently being led away from this area by our mother ship, but we can’t know how long or how far they can draw it.”

The Ambassador seemed to know at least some human languages as well, at least Spacer, and he quickly translated for the Captain.

“He does wish for the system to be operating and quickly.  In the meantime, he . . . he hopes you can help with another delicate situation,” the Ambassador returned.

“We’re happy to take a look and see if we can help,” Pirra answered, hoping it was something that actually fell into their purview.

“Pirra, go with them, I’m going to get everything rolling here,” the Commander ordered.

The Captain led her and the Ambassador deeper into the ship.  She wondered just how far; it was a massive vessel, one big enough to justify having an internal rail system.

They passed through a crew quarters area, but she saw only a few members of the crew; they seemed cold to both her and the Captain, though none questioned her presence.

After passing through a makeshift engineering shop, they came to an emergency door, one that had been sealed shut.

It contained a thick clear viewing port, and the Captain gestured to it.

“This area is contained for now, but we do not know for how long,” he said.

Pirra wondered if her translator had missed a word, but she drifted forward to look through.

At first it just seemed like some sort of converted cargo area.  She saw containers and tech modules bolted to the floors and bulkheads.

“Did it get vented to space?” she asked.

The answer did not come.  She looked back, to see the Captain staring at the Ambassador.  He didn’t want to talk and give away something, and the Ambassador seemed to be pointedly ignoring his stare.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes darting between them.  “I can’t help if you don’t tell me.  Look, if it’s some cargo that’s not legal then I can promise some discretion, but-“

“It’s not that,” the Ambassador said quickly.  He finally looked at the Captain, but K’Raaiia seemed to be unwilling to budge on whatever the issue was.

Pirra turned to look back through the window.  She saw movement, and tried to get a better angle, but her night vision was not that good.

It was a Hev, she was sure.  He was walking, and didn’t seem in distress.  While he wore a spacer’s suit, he didn’t have any helmet on, so the area had to be pressurized.

He turned, somehow sensing her gaze.  He looked directly at her.

And she realized that half of his face was not there.

Where it was, the nature of his injury, she did not know.  It was no longer like a Hev, but its head was grotesquely shaped on that side, and there was no edge.  It simply faded into the air, or the ether, she could not know.

Letting out a startled shriek, she pushed back from the port and drifted, staring at the Captain.

“Did your vessel come too close to the Leviathan?” she demanded.

There was a hesitation, and she snapped her next words sharply.  “If you do not tell us the extent of the harm, we cannot help – and we will be forced to leave.”

The Captain demanded a translation from the Ambassador, and once that had been given, he snarled back at her.  “You’re not leaving until we have power!”

“Captain!” the Ambassador said quickly.  “She has already seen and figured out the issue!  There is no point to threats or lies at this point.”

The Captain looked almost ashamed, but Pirra felt her blood rising at his threat.

Fighting back the urge to rip into him – verbally, at least – she looked to the Ambassador.  “Tell me.”

“My apologies,” he said, his voice truly humble and contrite.  “For very good reasons, we have been keeping the extent of the damage from the crew.  You asked if we had come close to the Leviathan – yes.  We did not simply come close, we believe that this section of the ship may have actually touched it in zerospace.”

“That’s not possible!” she burst out.  “Even getting within a few thousand kilometers of a Leviathan is enough to take any ship apart!”

“Except this one was asleep,” the Ambassador replied quietly.  “We believe . . . we believe that in its state of deep hibernation, its Reality Break Shadow was limited solely to its . . . for lack of a better word, physical structure.  And we struck it.”

“That’s what awoke it,” she realized.

“Yes.  This is all our fault,” he admitted.  “We could not have known, but we have awoken something terrible.”

He looked to the door.  “Touching it has affected our ship, and now all the good Hev in that section are trapped.  It is too late to help them, I think.  But the ship itself is changing – and that change is spreading.  This is the third corridor we’ve had to close as the infection spreads.”

---

< Part 12 | Part 14 >

---

“What we need is a lure that will keep the Leviathan’s attention,” Brooks said.

Cutter clicked his mandibles.  “May need to keep up this level of interest for long – we can likely weaken our lure’s strength over time, once we’re far from space lanes.”

Brooks looked to Kell.  “Do you think that would work?”

“Yes,” the Shoggoth replied.  “It will be most interested in the thing nearest it, I believe.  If we can weaken our effect as we go, all the better.  We may even be able to get it to go back to sleep.”

“How can we lull it to sleep?  Just through lowering our Krahteon emissions?” Urle asked.

“It must become unpredictable – your scans and engines are very noticeable, due to how . . .  orderly they are.  It is much more apparent.”

“Like how a voice stands out from natural sounds,” the Captain said.  “I think I can understand that.”

Kell shook his head.  “I assure you, you do not.  But you understand enough.”

“Can we scramble our emissions enough to do that?” he asked Cutter, ignoring Kell’s last words.

“Difficult,” Cutter replied.  “Don’t know how we can control order of particles that we’re just dumping through engine shunt.  We’d have to start actively modulating our signal.”  His head twitched side to side as he thought.  “That much power would burn out almost any system we have . . .”

“The nature of its interest is not in power.  It is in alterations that your engines make in what you call zerospace.  They are like tracks that can be felt.”

“So that means we can narrow our output just into the bands that will feel . . . track-like to the Leviathan.”

“You only need a shadow,” Kell said.

The engineer made a hiss.  “A shadow!  Like how a ship exhibits shadow of mass into mundane space as it travels in zerospace?”

Kell only regarded him curiously, as if he had not understood a lot of the words.  Finally, he gave the tiniest nod of his chin.  “Yes.”

“That makes sense!  Captain, I have idea.”

“Go ahead.”

“I want to take a shuttle and equip it to broadcast on channels that might create the shadow Kell was talking about – if we’re limited to just some frequencies, Krahteon loss will be sustainable for months, even with a shuttle’s engine.”

Brooks nodded.  “Get a team started on it immediately.”

“Yes sir.  We don’t have much time – we have to maintain enough pressure internally to keep the system from collapsing.”

The Captain’s words were heavy as he spoke.  “We have to consider leading it away to be of higher importance than the survival of this ship.”

No one could argue.

“In case this does not go well, we need to prepare for an emergency transmission and get as many of the civilians off the ship as possible.”

“Aye, sir,” Urle said.  “I will inform Response and Administration to begin preparing to jettison life sections and prepping the escape pods.”

Brooks said nothing, only nodding.

Cutter the engineer lingered, staring at the captain.  Brooks looked back at his reddish-black round eyes.

“Is there something else, Chief Engineer?” he asked.

“Captain,” he said.  “An emergency transmission will burn out engine.”

“I am aware,” Brooks said.  “But since we cannot stop to build a proper charge to open an FTL communication channel, it would be our only option – jettisoning the civilian sections will do them no good if they’re light years from an inhabited system.”

“I understand need, Captain.  It is just . . .  I have worked on the Craton‘s engine my entire life.”

Brooks nodded.  “And you’ve done very well, Cutter.  I understand the thought must be hard for you.”

“Captain, I request permission to stay with the ship should the situation get dire.”

The Captain stared at the Beetle-Slug.  “Permission denied, Chief Engineer.  Even if the Craton does not survive, I fully intend for us to.  There will be other ships, and other engines.”

“I do not want another ship or engine, Captain.”

Brooks leveled his gaze on the Beetle-Slug.  “My order stands.”

The insectoid hesitated, but then snapped a salute.  “Very well, Captain.  I have already sent a team to begin work on shuttle, but I will go supervise it personally.”

---

< Part 11 | Part 13 >

---

Pirra gripped the restraint strap tightly.  “All packaged and ready to go!” she shouted.

It wasn’t necessary; each member of the Response Unit had already clicked in that they were locked in for launch.  But it was tradition, at least for them, that the second-in-command shout out all confirmations.

The rest of the crew completed their traditional slogan;

“And ship us off to hell!”

Their commanding officer, Iago Caraval, grinned.  “Hold on tight, kids!”

The ship accelerated; she heard whoops from the team, but she kept silent and merely felt the glee rise up as the ship began to accelerate.

The launch tubes of the Craton were perfect for accelerating either massive kinetic slugs . . . or a shuttle in an emergency.  Just at a less break-neck speed.

She’d heard of humans who passed out from such high-speed launches.  It was an alien concept to her; while a human’s distant ancestors had been tree-clinging creatures, hers had been flying animals that dove head-first into water to catch swimming prey.  They could take high-G maneuvers and laugh it off.

Their ship shot into the black.  Suddenly seeing stars in all directions could be disorienting to humans, another factor that didn’t bother her.  They had never lost the parts of their brains that let them think easily in three-dimensions.

Her green feathers bristled.  “We have a lock on the Hev ship,” she commented.

“Course is set,” Caraval said.  “All right, everyone, briefing is now – that Hev ship might have touched the Leviathan in zerospace.  That means full-level safety standards are in effect.  Touch nothing without confirming it’s safe.”

All humor was gone; in their line of work, they all knew the hazards of interacting with anything altered by a Leviathan.  Even coming too close to one could make metal run like water, crawl like a living thing, or simply evaporate into gas.  And the effect could even spread to other things.  As little as observing something altered could be unhealthy.

“Do the Hev even know that the Craton is here?” someone asked.

“No.  We believe all equipment is down aboard their ship, and we were never within their visual range.  Even if they had a window and someone looked out, they wouldn’t have seen us.”

“All their power?  Every single reactor?” Pirra asked.

“That’s right,” Caraval said grimly.

It was unheard of – ships had multiple reactors, and even if those went off, such things as computer systems required such minuscule power compared to propulsion that even some emergency generators should have been able to keep something on.

“If that’s the case, then their translators aren’t going to be working,” someone realized.

Pirra let her crest fall in embarrassment.  It was a mistake that was too late to rectify.  They were running silent from the Craton, barring an emergency.  Couldn’t know what might irritate the Leviathan.

“Our translators will let us understand them,” someone else pointed out.

“Yes, but we need them to understand us.  Does anyone here speak Hev?” Caraval asked.

There was a silence.  No one had thought of that; they’d been launched too quick, and personal translators were typically a given.  Pirra couldn’t recall a single time that everyone on a ship had their personal systems fail.

It was going to be a big problem if they couldn’t assure they Hev they were there to help . . .

“I speak a little,” Pirra ventured.

“How little?” the Lt. Commander asked.  His look of surprise was typically human, far different from her kind, but she had learned to recognize it.  She was weird that way, actually learning another species’s language and mannerisms.

“A few basic phrases regarding haggling,” she replied.

“That will have to do,” Caraval said, with an exasperated sigh.

---

< Part 9 | Part 11 >

---

“All right, Kell – I understand your people have their secrets.  But you need to tell me everything you know about Leviathans.  Right now.”

Brooks stared at the being, who looked back at him with an apathy that would have enraged a lesser man.  But Brooks kept his composure.

He had called the Shoggoth into the Captain’s Study, and the being had taken his time in coming – four minutes, when it was less than a minute’s walk.

“You say that as if you believe I am hiding information from you,” Kell replied to him evenly.

“Aren’t you?” Brooks retorted.

“Yes,” Kell answered.  “But not for the reasons you seem to think.”  Shaking its head, Kell moved to sit, but despite these conspicuously human moves – that Brooks imagined were entirely intended to put him at a greater ease – there was still something unnatural in even just the way that Kell sat.  It was too rigid in some ways, too lax in others.

“Right now, I don’t care about your reasons.  There are 35,000 beings on the Craton – and trillions in the Sol System.  You need to tell me.”

“Can you describe color to a blind man?” Kell asked.

“What?”

Kell’s head turned to the side, and the being stared at him.  Unblinking.  “How does one describe something another being has never experienced?  I have memorized your entire language, and yet there are no words for what I see.  You want me to tell you how large the Leviathan is?  I see it expanding into infinity in dimensions your brain is incapable of imagining.  It fills the void, it fills the stars, infinite and finite at once.  Does this help you, Captain?”

Brooks sat forward.  “You’ve got to know something useful, Kell.”

“A weakness in it?  No, it is not that obvious.  I have never seen a being like it before, but I can see more than you.  I see that it has been asleep – in what you might call a nightmare – for the age of this universe.  And in even marginally awakening it, you and the Hev vessel have become the focus of its . . .  ire.  That is a simplification; it does not feel emotions as you understand them.  As I do not.  What do you and a paramecium have in common to feel, after all?”

“In this case we’re the microbe,” Brooks commented.

“In how it views you – I suspect yes.  It is not fully awakened, as I have said.  But it is somewhat awake, and it is lashing out.  It is not a stupid beast running purely on instinct.  Its intelligence is of a different kind than ours, and it is vast.”

Kell stood up.  “Captain, you have done the right thing by pulling it away from the path that leads to Earth.  More than you can ever realize, this mattered.  It will not have mercy on whatever or whomever it finds when it fully awakens.  Even if it wanted to.  We must not let it find a system that is inhabited by life.  If it costs all of our lives aboard this ship, it is worth it.”

Without another word, Kell left.

---

< Part 8 | Part 10 >