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“. . . I can emergency stop the engines, but then they can’t start up again.  Please advise!”

The message from Lily Brogan ended for the third time, and Ham Sulp’s face was grim as he looked at Cutter and Kai.  Y had joined them remotely, observing even as he tended to the first rescuees brought in.

“Definitely sounds like there’s transmission problems,” Sulp said.  “I don’t like it.”

“I agree,” Kai replied.  “I can tell a damaged radio when I hear one, though I cannot tell you what the problem is.”

“I concur, there is alteration of the signal that is far beyond the bounds I’d expect from basic damage,” Y commented.

“What could have done it?” Kai asked.  “Debris?”

“Most likely incidental heat of fusion reactor plasma release,” Cutter said  “Photon radiation damage alone, at such intensities, more than enough.  Location is consistent with pod escaping as confinement field deteriorated and escaped vessel.”

“Honestly lucky that the whole pod didn’t just get ‘vaporated,” Sulp said starkly.

“Time is of essence,” Cutter said.  “I suspect damage to port side of pod is severe.  Structural integrity is likely intact, but micro-leaks cannot be ruled out.”

“Even if it’s losing air, we have a good amount of time,” Kai said.  “Those pods have enough air to last for weeks.”

“It is not oxygen I am concerned about,” Cutter replied gravely.  He turned to the computer screen.  “Show schematic.”

The image of the pod came up, highlighting the potentially damaged side. 

“Location of radio on pod design is also near engine coolant lines,” Cutter said.  “Damage to that side of pod could have distorted thruster shape – causing skew.  System unaware – thinks it is sending the pod to the correct angle but cannot see that it is off because of disabled sensors.  Also reason it cannot communicate with us.  Blinded.”

Kai took that all in.  “Are you worried of thruster overheat?”

“Has not happened already, therefore of low concern.  Am worried of leak – into cabin.”

Kai took a deep breath.

Engine coolant was a dangerous, dangerous compound – and difficult to detect.

“If this is the case,” Y said, “then Ms. Brogan and Officer Pedraza are in serious danger.  Engine coolant has severe neurological effects.”

“It is known defect in pod design to have coolant lines positioned so,” Cutter hissed, sounding angrier than she’d ever known him to sound.  “Should not have been placed so close to interior air lines.  Should not have remained in service once flaw was discovered.  But old ship!  Carrying old parts.”  He clicked his mandibles rapidly in something approaching disgust.  “We must find out.  We must be sure.”

“If that’s the danger then we have to cut the engine right away,” Sulp said.  “It’ll lessen the pressure on the cooling system – potentially slow or even stop a leak.  As well as keep it from getting any further from us.”

“An emergency cutoff ends all chances of using the engine to lower the pod’s velocity, though,” Kai said.  “At her current rate I don’t think we could get a rescue ship next to her and do an extraction.  It’s just going too fast.”

“Already a moot point,” Sulp grunted.  “They’re not designed to be steered as a security precaution.  Even if we can get the pod to turn, the internal gyros will sense it and try to steer it back onto what it thinks is the right course – cuz it’s clear it does think it’s travelling properly.  Convincing it otherwise is a crapshoot, and to override it she’d have to gut the navigational computer.  At that point she’d be flying totally blind.”

“Surely the pod is designed to accept commands to change course!” Cenz said.

“Nope,” Sulp replied.  “That pod’s old, like Cutter says, made after the conflict with the Aeena.  After what they did to our prisoners, we made our pods harder to control – remotely or even from inside.  Theory was that it’d be better to trust an AI to steer the pod safe since it can parse data better.  If she just tells it to alter course, it may well trigger the security protocols and go into silent mode for forty-eight hours.”

“That was a terrible idea when it was first implemented,” Kai said.  “I can’t believe any remained in service.”

“Yep,” Sulp said, shaking his head in disgust.  “Should never take the living element outta the equation.  Or else why are we even out here?  But th’ Union hadn’t faced anyone as cruel and genocidal as the Aeena before.  It led to some stupid decisions.  Hell, there was talk for awhile of giving pods a self-destruct so people could avoid being taken prisoner – they were that scared.”

“That issue is beyond current scope,” Cutter said.  “Other options may be possible to slow pod.  We must order engine cut.  We must prevent potentially lethal problem.  If all else is stable, the pod can support life for weeks.”

“All else is not stable, however,” Y said.  “Lily Brogan stated that she was injured and that Officer Pedraza was badly burned.  The medical drone with him will have little ability to stabilize his condition and we are unsure how serious her condition is.  I fear we may lose him at the very least if we do not recover the pod within the next few hours.”

“We need to get a team out there,” Kai said.

“I have run the math,” Y said.  “It will be a dangerously high-g maneuver even at this current time.  Cutting the engines will buy us some leeway as then it will at least no longer be acclerating away from us.”

“I’m going to assemble the team right away,” Kai said.

“I shall message Ms. Brogan,” Cutter said.  “Guide her through steps of checking coolant lines safely.”

“I’ve got an idea to look into,” Sulp said.  “Contact me once we know more.”

< Ep 9 Part 12 | Ep 9 Part 14 >

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“As you can see, Captain, the impactor debris was travelling orders of magnitude faster than your average piece of space rock,” Cenz said, bringing up the data.  “These pieces were annihilated on a level inconsistent with normal speeds.”

Brooks studied the data.  He was not as versed in such things as his science officer or engineer, but the data was still clear even to him.  He remained quiet a moment as he looked at it.

“How large was this object, then?” he finally asked.

“We have modeled different-sizes, but we expect it was approximately five meters in diameter,” Cenz replied.

“Could it have been a natural object accelerated intentionally as a novel form of attack?” Jaya asked.

“Unlikley,” Cutter replied.  “Why go through such trouble when it still appears as attack anyway?”

“I agree that seems unlikely,” Brooks said.  “But do you have an explanation for how the object got to be moving so fast?  If it was travelling somewhere between 200 and 1000 kilometers per second, that’s orders of magnitude higher than most natural objects.”

“Yes,” Cenz said.  “Knowing which reactors were hit and when, along with the ship’s orientation allows us to track the object’s original path.”

The ship appeared in the 3D model, with a red line extending out from it.  It zoomed out to show multiple stars.

“Accounting for galactic rotation, it suggests that the object originated along this path.  Along that path, we encounter the ternary system of Eris Setani.”

Jaya’s eyebrow arched.  “Ominous name.”

“For good reason,” Cenz continued.  “The system is a very messy collection of two neutron stars and a main sequence star they are actively feeding upon.  The instability of a three-body orbit means that they could easily be the culprit – gravitationally slinging objects out at unnatural speeds.

“What’s more, however, the spectographic traces of the remains of the object recovered from the whipple shield, while not particularly unusual, match the makeup of objects from the Eris Setani system.”

“This system is sixteen hundred lightyears out,” Jaya said.

“Yes.  But due to its unusual qualities, it is also a highly-studied location,” Cenz replied.

“My people dispatched long-distance probes to system one thousand years ago,” Cutter said.  “Though we ourselves never visited, we understand it very well.”

Brooks was quiet again for a long time, considering.

“So you are saying,” he said, breaking his silence, “that this object was sent out of the Eris Setani system something like half a million years ago, and the Maria’s Cog just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“As we have not yet ascertained its exact speed, its time of origin would have been between 480,000 and 2.4 million years ago – but in essence you are correct, sir,” Cenz said.

“It seems too impossible,” Brooks said.

“I believe I have one more piece of data that may help, sir,” Cenz said.  “As Cutter noted, his people have been placing probes in systems for study for millenia, which includes nearby systems.”

A chart appeared, showing small spikes – with a single sudden spike rising far beyond the others.

“In that time, their probes have detected seventeen spikes such as these, through their own systems or nearby systems.  They were actually dismissed as sensor ghosts, simple errors.  But the data matches exactly what we would expect from small objects travelling orders of magnitude faster than expected.”

Cenz paused, leaning back.  “In other words, this area of space is simply in the line of fire for Eris Setani.  For whatever reason, in ages long past it sent numerous pieces of incredibly fast debris flying this way.”

Brooks sat back.

“Frankly, I thought that discovering this was not an attack would make me feel better.  But to think that such objects are truly flying around is far more disturbing than even a hostile force.”

“Would they have had any chance to see this coming?” Jaya asked.

“No,” Cutter said.  “Drone screen was not sufficient for object of this speed.  Would require more and better drones in different pattern.  But if sufficient drones had been carried and deployed?  Yes.”

“No one could have expected this,” Brooks said.  “If it is indeed the case.  The crew of the Maria’s Cog did everything right, but this still happened.”

Jaya was leaning forward, still studying the data.  “What do you make of this, Urle?”

The Executive Commander was not present, working on another deck, but he had been remotely watching the conversation.

“It’s all possible, and I think pretty compelling.  The odds are astronomical – but that’s just why we haven’t seen it before, since even the worst odds don’t mean impossible.  We’re not seeing any enemy ships, no actual coilgun slug, Union intelligence has no information on enemy ships in our territory, especially not this deep.  I think their theory holds water.”

“I concur,” Brooks said.  “You two have done excellent work.  I’m going to forward this preliminary work to command, so if you have anything else you want to add to that, get it to me shortly.”

“Captain,” Cutter said.  “Time is of essence on different matter.  Request permission to focus more effort upon errant escape pod.”

“What is your reasoning?” Brooks asked.  “They are already a high priority given their situation, but is there more?”

“Pod’s radio signals display degradation that gives me concern,” Cutter said.  “I fear damage may be more significant than initially thought.  I must investigate further.”

Brooks nodded.  “Permission granted.  At this point, all we can do is make sure we get as many people in alive as we can.”

< Ep 9 Part 11 | Ep 9 Part 13 >

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Before them hovered the three-dimensional image of the Maria’s Cog and its millions of pieces of debris.

Once all escape pods from the doomed ship had been accounted for, Cenz had joined with Cutter.  The Bicet had been putting together the 3D model using the ship’s primary sensors as well as small scout probes.

Cenz had been shocked by Cutter’s use of them; he sent them on near suicide-runs deep into the debris fields.  Dozens had been lost, but the sacrifices had been worth it.

“Look at the pattern of the burning,” Cenz said, zooming in on a piece of the hull.

It had once been one of the outer plates of the Maria’s Cog, but now it was half-slag.

“Yes.  Melt patterning shows heat source came from inside vessel,” Cutter said.

“And the pulverization fraction indicates heavy boiling which suggests extreme temperatures,” Cenz continued.  “That is consistent with a fast release from the fusion reactor – the temperature would have dropped much lower if the release had not been traumatic.”

Cutter was silent a moment as he studied the image.  “I concur,” he said softly.  “Though, the release of a fusion reactor plasma ring in any circumstances . . . is nothing if not traumatic.”

Cenz turned to study his co-conspirator and friend more carefully.

Cutter did not seem to notice.  “Notice atomic marks – cross-hatching of burn pattern at this point.  It indicates that there was not one but two plasma releases striking at almost the same moment.  With certainty we can say both damaged reactors fully ruptured.”

“Two at the same time . . .  The log suggested within the same second, but this is even more precise than that.  Such marks would have been melted away by a second ring if it had come more than a fraction of a second later,” Cenz noted.

“Yes . . . two rings would also explain formation of primary ship pieces,” Cutter added.

“So we can state with certainty that the impactor hit both within a small fraction of a second.” Cenz concluded.

“Indeed.  A single object, travelling at extremely high velocities, high enough to penetrate whipple shield, outer hull, and continue deep into vessel.”

Cenz knew that Cutter had to be right.  But few things in space moved that fast . . . save for weapon projectiles.

“An enemy attack, then?” he asked.

“No,” Cutter said.  “Simple misfortune.”

Cenz paused, taking that idea in.  “Can you prove it, though?” he finally asked.  “I certainly hope you can, but the evidence suggests this was a surgical strike, not an accident.  Wouldn’t any such natural impactor have been detected by their drone network and scanners?  It would have had to be travelling at incredibly high speeds to not be caught in time and to have the energy for this kind of penetration.  And simply – what are the odds of a random object causing such a perfectly disastrous hit, Cutter?”

Cutter was silent a long moment.  “Odds are small.  But they do exist.”

“I must concur that it’s possible, but we need good evidence.”

“We have it,” Cutter said.  “Debris piece #21827 – observe.”

It was a piece of the whipple shield – a standard piece of stand-off armor that all ships carried.  Multi-layered, they were not designed or able to stop objects, not even small ones.  Instead, they broke them up, absorbing much of the energy so that the heavy armor underneath could better resist being holed by every tiny meteor.

Their layered nature also meant, though, that they could sometimes catch the smallest pieces of debris.

It was what Cenz knew he was seeing now.  The tiny black flecks had torn through the shielding, broken up on the hull and bounced off.  They had penetrated a few of the layers on the way back out, but not all the way.

“Do you believe these are pieces of the original impactor?” Cenz asked.

“Yes,” Cutter replied.

“How did you even find this?” Cenz asked in awe.  This was perhaps the most important find among the wreck that they could have located, and yet should also be one of the most difficult.

“At great cost,” Cutter said.  “Primary evidence was key.  Primary evidence would be at most dangerous area, epicenter of disaster.  Thus sacrifice of drones was necessary.”

“Incredible.  You sent the probes straight in, didn’t you?” Cenz asked.

“Yes.  But drone losses unimportant now.  Pieces of rock retain signs of recent shock and heat damage – showing that impact falls within time frame of Maria’s Cog destruction.  Spectographic analysis shows a common composition of nickel-iron,” Cutter said.  “Have not yet found point of origin of potential debris, however.”

“I may be able to help there,” Cenz said, bringing up a digital panel and flipping through screens.  “If this is their spectographic data . . .  I may be able to match it to a specific system we have studied.”

He looked to Cutter.  “How was the ship oriented?  If you have found this piece, I take it you know where the initial hit was?  This would narrow the field.”

Cutter brought back up the image of the Maria’s Cog, now reconstructed to its original state.  An area on her front cone was highlighted.

“Exact spot difficult.  But object struck frontal shield, penetrating it.  Vessel was oriented coreward.”

“Downtown,” Cenz noted.

Nearly all ships carried a frontal cone of heavy armor to block micro-meteors in their primary direction of travel.  The Craton‘s was enormous, due to her shape, but since most ships were long and narrow tubes, the cone could be smaller on them.

If a vessel was not actively travelling, it was common to point the shield towards the galactic core – or downtown, as many called it.

A cute little colloquialism, Cenz thought, and apt.  The core of the galaxy was incredibly crowded with stars, black holes, and other celestial objects, but the practice was largely just a habit rather than practical.

Taking the ship’s orientation into account, Cenz traced the route the impactor seemed to have taken through the ship – for it to have hit reactors eight and three meant he could plot a very specific course for it.

Following that line out, he peered into the cosmos of data.

“I have it,” he said.  “Cutter, you are correct.  I can prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

“We must speak with Captain,” Cutter said.

< Ep 9 Part 9 | Ep 9 Part 11 >

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“. . . so if there are any errors, please tell me exactly what they say.”

Lily felt her heart beat faster at the words.  

This was not within her scope of duties.  She was not dumb, she had gone through emergency drills, worked in other fields.

But she’d never had so much riding on those drills.  And she found her mind a blank.

All of that practice, however, did pay off.  Stepping to the status console, she had no idea what to look for at first, the controls seeming foreign to her.

Her hands moved, turning on the internal diagnostics.  An icon of a crying kitten appeared as it booted, and then a plethora of errors came up, filling her with dread.

Many of them had come up when she’d checked the primary system earlier, but now, on the diagnostic system they were longer, more detailed, and seemed even more terrifying.

Systems failures . . . the external auto-comms that let the pod’s computer talk to other ships was broken.  Outside sensors were out, so it was flying blind.  Something was wrong with thrusters, but due to the last two problems it could not say what.  There was also a problem with the coolant lines and they were on back-up.

That last one alarmed her, and she brought it up.  Were the engines going to overheat?

But no; it seemed the backups were sufficient.  It only meant that if something went wrong with the secondaries that they might overheat and shut-off.

It’s recommendation; inform rescuers to prioritize her rescue in case of further problems.

“I’m trying to do that!” she said out loud.

But the engines were a good point.  She was going the wrong way.  She should turn them off as soon as possible.

“Deactivate engines,” she ordered.

More errors turned up; engines non-responsive to orders.  Internal shut-down systems non-functional.

It came up with an option; execute emergency engine shut-off?

If she did that they wouldn’t be able to be turned back on.

Her eyes went to the 3D model nearby showing her location compared to the others.  She had cobbled it together, but she felt confident in her skills with figuring it out.

She contemplated if she could feed that data into the system to help it correct course, but rejected it quickly.  Navigation was extremely complex, and her map was nowhere close to precise enough for it to accept.

She wasn’t sure if she should turn off the engines, though.  She should tell the Craton responders and they could tell her if it was a good idea or not.  She just did not know enough to make such a call – she might need them for braking later.

Putting that aside, she prepared to respond when she remembered the medical issue.

“Release medical drone,” she ordered.  She was feeling better; her pain was lessening, which she imagined was from the nano-probes and painkillers at work.

The drone was set into the wall, releasing with a soft whir as its engines activated.  It floated towards her, scanning her up and down.

Then it turned and floated away.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

It did not answer, but moved around towards the boarding area.  It was separated from the main pod by short bulkheads, and she wondered if the drone was malfunctioning as well.

“There’s no one else in here to worry about,” she said.

The drone dipped down, and she leaned around the wall.

And saw Davyyd.

“Oh stars!” she cried, dropping to her knees.

The drone was scanning the man, but it was obvious he was in a bad way.  Burns came up over the back of his uniform, and around him was a pool of blood.

She dared peer over his shoulder, and what she saw made her almost gag.

“Is he irradiated?” she asked the drone.

“Negative.  No signs of radiation damage.  Third-degree burns over 22% of his body.  Shock and blood loss.”

“Can you stabilize him?” she asked, touching the man on a spot that didn’t seem to be hurt.  “Davyyd?  Can you hear me?”

He shifted, groaning in pain.

The drone injected him with something and he suddenly took a deep, pained breath.

“. . . Lily?” he said softly.

“Davyyd!  What happened?  I didn’t know you were even on board!  I’m so sorry, I couldn’t remember . . .”

“Short-term memory . . . affect of the drugs,” he said, his voice weak and hoarse.  “Gave you what we had.”

“Why did you do that?” she demanded, feeling tears slipping from her eyes.  “You needed them more than me!”

“You have a chance,” he said shortly.  His eyes opened, white against skin darkened by soot.  “Not enough to help me.”

The memory of him trying to head back into the ship, but knocked towards her by an explosion came to her.

She’d pulled him in.  But then she’d passed out and he’d been awake enough to give her the meds . . .

Dark, how had he had the strength to do it?

“What can you do for him?” she asked the drone.  “Stabilize him!”

“Working,” the drone said.  “Injury severity beyond scope of care.  Painkillers are only option but limited in quantity.  Give anyway?”

“Yes!” she ordered.

The drone gave him another injection, and Davyyd breathed out slowly in relief.

“Do you feel better?” she asked.

“I don’t feel as bad,” he admitted.  “But save them . . . I’m dead anyway.”

“Not if I can get us help,” she said.  “Just hold on, okay?”

He nodded weakly, and she got up, running to the console.

“Craton, this is Lily Brogan in Pod 57 – the pod is flying blind and just keeps burning.  We’re going further away from you and I can’t get the engines to stop normally.  We’re running on secondary coolant lines.  I can emergency stop the engines, but then they can’t start up again.  Please advise!”

She took a deep breath, the guilt of not finding Davyyd sooner gnawing at her.  “I’ve got one other in the pod with me, Response Officer Davyyd Pedraza.  He’s badly burned and bleeding!  The medical drone says it can’t do anything for him except give him pain meds . . .  Please, we need help.  I know others need it, too, but we’re in a bad way here.”

She sent it, trying to sort out what she should do next.

Looking back towards Davyyd, she wondered if she should do anything more for him, but the medical drone was still hovering over him.  It was putting some kind of disinfectant sealant over his burns.

Lily knew she had no medical training.  She’d just be in the way.

There was nothing left to do but wait and hope for help to come.

< Ep 9 Part 8 | Ep 9 Part 10 >

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Kai Yong Fan sat down to be closer to the level of Cutter.  Beetle slugs, even when standing at their tallest, reached just barely a meter in height.

“What do you need, Chief Engineer?” she asked.

She kept the impatience out of her voice – she knew Cutter would never waste time.

“The errant pod is accelerating still.  Remote signal to slow it is not working – likely from damage.  Require skilled intercession to speak to survivors, see if damage can be repaired.  Must stop pod’s acceleration.”

It was practically a novel from the being, and Kai understood the significance immediately.  With the current velocity of the pod it’d be hard to catch as it was; if it contined to burn its engine it would only get harder.  A jump to go catch it was possible, but they could not possibly do that for another ten hours.

“I have some specialists who can handle this,” Kai told Cutter.  “I’ll get them on it right away.”

“Good.  Will continue to monitor communications.  Must learn extent of damage.”

Cutter dashed away, and Kai brought up her list of Response communicators.  Technically many of them were under Eboh’s command in Communications, but they were specialists for Response situations.

All of them were busy at the moment, in the midst of talking to others.  She looked to see if she could slip this pod in sooner, but it was impossible to predict with any accuracy how long they might be on their current calls.

She checked her own itinerary.

As head of Response, she had a lot to do behind the scenes; it was not as directly active a role as most expected, at her current level she was largely a bureaucrat.  She did not issue direct commands once the Response forces were deployed unless there was a major shift in tact.  The numerous Coordination Dispatchers handled direct comms, and their commander handled moment-by-moment decisions with only occasional input from her.

She had the time.  And she still was rated to do this.

“Pod number 57, this is the Craton.  Please respond with your status – of yourselves and your pod.”

There was three seconds of light lag to the pod – which meant they were already nearly a million kilometers away.

Six seconds later, the reply came.

“Craton, this is Lily Brogan,” the call came back.  “I’m not in great shape, but I’ve got some nano meds so I guess I’ll survive until pickup.  When will that be?  As for the pod, uh . . . I don’t see any signs of damage in here.  But I know I’m off-course.  What can I do to help you help me?”

“Ms. Brogan, we’re trying to get help to you as soon as possible.  I need you to activate the medical drone on your pod and have it scan you and any other passengers so we can understand your medical situation.  Tell it to connect to your radio to send us that data.  I also need you to use the pod’s internal check-up system on the console to tell me its status.  It doesn’t seem to be able to communicate with us, so if there are any errors, please tell me exactly what they say.”

She sent the message, and as she did so she saw Cutter scurrying over to her again.

“Abnormal signal structure in last message from Ms. Brogan,” the being said.  Their voices rarely carried intonation, but something about the beetle-slug seemed alarmed.

“I noticed some dropped packets – it’s not distance or interference from debris?”

“Ruled out.  It is an issue with pod modulator.”  Cutter considered.  “Physical damage to pod is a logical conclusion.”

“I have instructed her to tell us of any errors on the console,” Kai said.  “Since we cannot talk to the pod itself, she can at least tell us what it knows internally.”

Cutter leaned back onto his slug-like tail, lifting all of his sets of limbs off the deck and running them together in a wave.

He was clearly lost in thought.

“Something not right.  Learn all you can of pod status,” he asked.  “I must study signal further.  Structural aberrations. . . are disturbing.”

Lowering himself back onto his full set of legs, he scurried off.

Kai could only wait now, for Lily Brogan to follow the orders and report back.

In the meantime, she looked into the personnel logs, to learn everything she could about Lily Brogan.  She was a drone tech, but Kai hoped she had more training.  Whether she lived or not might depend on it.

< Ep 9 Part 7 | Ep 9 Part 9 >

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Cenz brought up a display in Brooks’s vision.

“I have accounted for all two hundred and forty life pods carried by the Maria’s Cog.”

Brooks saw the list.  Only ninety-seven were listed as launched.

“That’s all she carried?” Brooks asked.

“Yes, Captain.  Since being decommissioned as a generation ship, the vast majority of her pods were removed and she was equipped with surplus pods from the 2920s.  As they are capable of carrying ten individuals each, two-hundred and forty are considered more than sufficient for her typical crew of only nine-hundred and fifty-nine.  However, my preliminary data suggests that each pod that was launched is occupied by an average of 2.8 people.  I may be wrong in this, but it suggests that . . .”

He trailed off.

“Less than a third of the crew escaped,” Brooks finished softly.  “Are there any signs of survivors on the ship?”

“We are still investigating that probability,” Cenz said.  “I request permission to focus on this in lieu of the cause as our primary operation.”

“Denied,” Brooks said.  “If there’s a threat out there, it’s most vital we be aware of it, or everyone in those pods could die, along with us,” Brooks said.

“Aye, Captain.”

“What else have you found?”

“Of the ninety-seven pods that were launched, all but seven are moving towards a rendezvous location at these coordinates.  There is debris also moving that way, but if we use this course, we can avoid the majority of it – I commend the Maria Cog‘s AI in picking the best path for its pods to take, as they have made our job more manageable.”

“What of those other seven?” Brooks asked.

“Four, I am afraid to say, were destroyed.  I have not ascertained a cause yet,” Cenz said.  He brought up a magnified image.

The pod was split open, nearly in two pieces, its inside safe area completely open.  Even if the survivors had been in full space suits, it was impossible to think they could have survived the impact.

“Others show damage consistent with the theory that two of the ship’s fusion reactors ruptured, and a plasma ring tore through the vessel.”

Brooks’s stomach sank to think that two reactors had suffered full containment failures.

Fusion reactors were notoriously reliable and safe.  Even when breached, it rarely resulted in something as catastrophic as a full containment failure, their multiple safety systems and redundancies were usually capable of spinning down to a significant degree.

He would have thought that at least one of the reactors would be able to spin down, even if badly damaged.

There were many other forms of energy generation that could produce more power – miniature black holes, matter-antimatter colliders, but they were far less stable and more dangerous.

“Have we found any locations for impact sites?” Brooks asked.

“We have scanned several potential sites, but there are few likely candidates.  I suspect that both reactors were breached by a single object.”

The data logs, as concise as they were, did state clearly that both reactors had been breached in the same second.  It did not prove there was just a single impactor, but it was unlikely she got hit by two shots in less than a second – not without there being an enemy fleet out there.

“Dark, that’s an incredible shot if it was intentional,” Brooks said, his voice hollow.

“We must accept the possibility that we may never know the truth here, Captain,” Cenz said.

He felt a shroud of impotent anger settle upon him.  Sometimes there just were not answers.

“Good work, Cenz,” Brooks said.  “But what of the last pods that are not on course and not destroyed?”

“One is slightly off-course,” Cenz said.  “It will not be difficult to recover.  Another that I believe was an empty launch is firing off straight – it is broadcasting as empty and has gone cold inside.  It is normal for these actions to occur to help with search and rescue.”

“That leaves one more.  Where is it?”

“Here,” Cenz said, highlighting it.

Brooks saw that the course of the pod was opposite of the others.  Instead of curving towards the rendezvous point, it was curving away.  And accelerating still.

“It appears to be malfunctioning, or perhaps damaged,” Cenz said.  “It is moving further away.”

Brooks looked up.  “Is it occupied?”

“Yes, Captain,” Cenz told him.  “We made contact with it just before I came over.  It has at least one survivor aboard.”

< Ep 9 Part 6 | Ep 9 Part 8 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Her ears were ringing after the explosion.

She felt more than heard the sound of herself gasping, her chest heaving hard to pull air into lungs that had been deprived for . . .

She didn’t know how long.

But she was alive.

The bulkhead above her was curved, a dark utilitarian gray metal.  She looked to either side, seeing that she was in one of the escape pods.

How had she gotten here?  The last thing she remembered was the massive sound, being thrown-

She reached up an arm, pain shooting through her, but she found she could move her left.  Her right arm was stiff, immoble against her front, and she looked down to see that it was bound in a quick-cast.  It must have been broken and someone had put her into it.

Looking down took a lot out of her, her head swimming.  She probably had a concussion, which meant she had to stay awake . . .

But even as she thought that she felt herself drifting out of consciousness.

A beeping sound awoke her.  It was a shrill, demanding noise, and she groaned, reaching for the console.  Pain shot through her right arm as she tried to move it, and she suddenly remembered.

Sitting up suddenly, her head spun, but it settled after a few moments.

She looked down and saw two small plastic discs stuck to her midriff.  One was an antibiotic and painkiller, the other was one of the precious medical nanos – machines as small as a cell that could be pumped into a person.  They could repair damage, spur healing, even specialize into specific roles to keep vital organs functioning.

Someone had really worked hard to save her.

The painkiller might be why she didn’t remember much.  That, or she’d suffered brain damage.  In which case she could only hope that the medical nanos were up to the task.

Her limbs still felt like they weighed ten times more than usual as she got up, crawling towards the console that was still beeping at her.  They must still be moving at more than one G, she thought.

“On,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

“Maria’s Cog Pod #57, this is the Craton!  Are you there?  Give us a signal.  Repeat, Maria’s Cog Pod #57 . . .”

It was an automated call, and she swallowed nervously as she activated the transmit button.  A list of errors appeared in her HUD, only a few of which she understood.  The transmitter had suffered some kind of damage, but as she swiped them away, she found that she still had a signal.  It wasn’t that strong, but it was enough.

“Craton, this is Lily Brogan . . .  Drone Repair Tech second class . . .  I’m here!  I’m alive.”

She didn’t know what else to say.  She gotten emergency training, done a hundred drills, there were things she had to do.

She wracked her brain.  She was in the pod and they’d launched . . .

Wait, they had, hadn’t they?  She looked at the console, sweeping aside warnings and looking for course.

There!  Bringing up the screen, she saw that they had launched away from the Maria’s Cog, a dashed line showing their course.

It was a dotted, flashing line through a three-dimensional space.

This was her forte; she worked with drones in space all the time, and her long experience made the image make sense.  They were still accelerating, the pod’s fuel still burning.  So it hadn’t been that long since they’d launched, the pod didn’t have fuel or reaction mass for more than ten hours of burn.

She began to search for more data to overlay, the work helping her understand what happened but also giving her something to do while she waited for an answer.

The pod had only rudimentary sensors, and most weren’t working, but she was able to overlay the position of the Craton; they were broadcasting their locational data and she could triangulate it with the Maria’s Cog itself, which was still broadcasting – even if just gibberish.  If they had continued on their course it meant she’d be getting a reply soon.

Placing the Maria’s Cog, she zoomed out.  There had to be other pods near them, but something was off.  She had been nearest to the port pod bay, but her location did not match that launch.  It didn’t match any launch location for pods on the Maria’s Cog at all.

The locations of other pods was not a priority for any individual pod to track, though they did note other fast-moving objects for purposes of avoiding collisions.  So if she filtered based on their likely velocities . . .

A series of dots began to glow.  Some were debris whose velocity just fell into the right ranges, but others had to be the pods.

A pattern was clear.  The pods had launched in droves from port and starboard.

But she was off-course.  Nowhere near the others, which were on curved courses, designed to meet up a distance from their mothership, so that they could be picked up by rescuers easier.

Her course was curving the other way.

She scanned the data again, double checking, then triple-checking it.

But it seemed consistent.

She sat back, taking a breath.  Fear was powerful, but this wasn’t a death sentence.  The Craton had its own zerodrive, that was the only way it could even have been here to help them so quickly.  Even if it took time to charge again, and her pod continued to fly off-course, they could collect her.  It just meant she’d be out here for awhile . . .

But escape pods had survival rations and the basic facilities of life.  A small medical drone, rations for ten for two weeks, air recyclers . . .  She could survive.

Sniffing and wiping her face, she sat back.  She just had to wait.

Her head was swimming again, and she felt like – no, she knew – she was forgetting something.

But she could not remember what.

< Ep 9 Part 4 | Ep 9 Part 6 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

“We have surfaced in normal space,” Ji-min Bin called.

Brooks rose from his chair, taking in the view of space around them as reality coalesced on the screens.

“Scanning for krahteon emissions . . .” Cenz said.  “No krahteons detected.”

There was a slight exhalation of breath from many, Brooks included.  “Keep up low-intensity scans – carefully.  Just in case we have another sleeping giant.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Recording twelve minor impacts upon the frontal cone,” Bin called.  “Very small pieces, likely debris.”

“Just a few new dents for the frontal armor,” Urle commented.  “Nothing serious.”

“Automatic interception lasers are firing,” Jaya commented.

On the screen, brief, bright red lines appeared, the navigational lasers on the ship’s towers incinerating small objects flying at them.

“Filter infrared and find me our ship,” Brooks ordered.

A small speck highlighted on the screen, then magnified.  It was the Maria’s Cog.

Glints of light from a million pieces of debris danced, glittering like fireflies on a summer’s night.

But the ship herself was a wreck.

She had broken up into at least three major pieces.  Areas of the hull showed jagged damage, but other cuts appeared relatively straight, sliced cleanly.

“She definitely got hit by something with a lotta joules,” Ham Sulp messaged.  He was not on the bridge, but he was observing all they saw.  “Something deep into her.”

“It appears the impact came in through her nose shield and pierced at least seven kilometers through her superstructure,” Jaya said.

“If it pierced the nose cone then it was highly energetic, as Commander Sulp suggests,” Cenz said thoughtfully.  “This would be consistent with a projectile launched from a heavy coilgun.”

“High-temperature plasma burns,” Urle noted, highlighting marks on the hull.  “The reactor breaches released plasma rings and those are what ripped the ship apart.  If not for that, she would have survived the impact, I bet.”

“But who attacked them?” Jaya said.  “At the moment that is the most important thing to know.  Every weapon leaves traces, and we must find them here.  Other than directly IDing an enemy ship, that is our best bet to finding out who did this.”

“Do not jump to conclusions before further assessment of data,” Cutter said.  “Deeper scans will reveal true cause of damage.”

Brooks found his eyes following the lines of the ship, feeling a hurt to see her so broken.  Brooks knew her type well – the Maria’s Cog had never been a beautiful vessel in the traditional sense.  But ships like her were the lifeblood of distant worlds and stations, the unrecognized heroes of a star-faring civilization.

Now cut apart like a carcass on a chopping block.

The glints of light from the debris hinted at the dangers lurking around her.  They could be a piece of hull, radioactive waste, food, someone’s tablet.  Or even a body itself, frozen solid in space.  At high enough speed any one of those could cause catastrophic damage if it hit the right place.

They had to proceed with caution.

“What are our sensor sweeps finding?” Brooks asked.

“We are detecting no other large vessels,” Cenz said.

“Find all likely locations they could be hiding from our sensors,” Jaya said.  “Behind astronomical objects, even in a star’s light.”

“This area contains seven long-term monitoring probes,” Cenz said.  “I am querying them all, but the nearest two report that they have had no view of any vessel besides the Maria’s Cog in the last 248 days.  Their view, while not complete, covers many nearby plausible objects that could be screening an enemy vessel.  And to be quite honest; we are in interstellar space.  There is not much around that could serve as cover.”

Jaya looked even more displeased by that; she did not speak, thinking.

Brooks understood why she’d be so disquieted.  She had to view situations through the lens of how they might threaten the ship and her crew, and it did seem obvious that this was an intentional attack.

But the lack of enemy was strong evidence against.  To hide from the sensors of the monitoring probes was not something that could be done easily; with the multiple reactors any zerospace-capable vessel must possess, the amount of IR they put out was like a beacon.

“Captain,” Cenz said.  “There are nearly one hundred lifepods with active signals.”

“We need to begin recovery operations,” Kai said, turning her chair to face Brooks.  “I have all Response Teams on standby.  We await your orders, Captain.”

“Stars and rads, it’s going to be hard to extract them from that mess,” Sulp messaged.

“Begin deploying rescue drones first,” Brooks ordered.

Jaya frowned, but did not object.  Prioritizing the rescue drones meant the Craton had much less protection or ability to detect incoming threats for a time.  If an enemy had caused the destruction of the Maria’s Cog, they would be vulnerable.

But the evidence was still unclear, no enemy was near.  If somehow they had learned to hide themselves so completely that they were not detectable by the probes or the Craton, then it hardly mattered what precautions they took.  They would be outclassed to such a degree that resistance would be impossible.

Brooks continued.  “Get signals on all lifepods and search for any that may have gone dark, just in case.  Have secondary comm centers one and two begin actively pinging those that are signaling, I want to know their status so we can start rescue triage.  And find out everything you can from them about what happened to the ship.”

He frowned, studying the separating parts of the Maria’s Cog again, still slowly drifting away from each other.

“I want Science using secondary sensors to find those pods – without an obvious current danger we want to close our window of vulnerability and get them out of there as soon as possible.  Engineering, you have primary sensor arrays.  Start your own investigation, see if you can ascertain what destroyed the vessel.  Even more than rescue, we need to know if this was an attack or an accident – if there’s a threat, it goes beyond the fates of the Maria’s Cog‘s crew and even our ship.  The Union needs to know if we’ve got an enemy in our midst.  I want your preliminary answer in twenty minutes.”

He sighed.  “And until we can rule out an attack, get the combat drones launching as soon as the rescue ones are out.  At the very least we’ll need them to intercept that debris.  Just . . .”

He hesitated, staring again.

“Try not to shoot the bodies unless you have to.  I want to recover everyone we can.  The living and the dead.”

< Ep 9 Part 3 | Ep 9 Part 5 >