FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

This story came about as kind of a challenge for myself. I'm a huge fan of a certain series of movies, books, and comics, but the entire setting often comes out as rather formulaic. So I thought it would be fun to write my story following the general formula for the setting that I know so well. I made a few tweaks, but generally speaking I think I hit all the notes you see in the stories/movies.

I know I haven't said what series/movies, and that's deliberate. I like the idea of the surprise, though I'm sure it won't take long for fans to figure out what I'm doing. ^^ This is also my longest completed work at about 22.5K words, so it took a lot of editing before I think it turned out all right.

I am also deliberately leaving the tags somewhat vague so that there are no spoilers. Please do not add any spoiler tags to the story.

Hope you enjoy it!

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Deep Space...

Sensors sampled, read, absorbed data and fed it to a central computer where disseminated, dissected, analyzed for certain readings distilled from background readings and distortion from travelling at speeds human minds cannot yet achieve. Sun types, gravity distortions minute enough that indicate planets around suns, spectral analysis of those planets, always searching for readings that meet certain narrow requirements.

After years, real-time, a blip fastened on in an instant by the limited computer mind set to the task. The device looked for the right sun, the right type of planet, the right spectrographic reading, radiation readings within tolerances. All these numbers equal a next step in the system's processes. Commands course along the ship's systems, magnetic lines altered and vectors of thrust shift and alter a course over light-years. The calculations are precise, the computer calculates orbits, intervening objects, and comes to a vector that will bring the ship into orbit around the planetary body while also passing through exterior regions in the system to gather the mass if needed for an outbound course.

The ship then goes dormant until the appropriate time. While outside the ship's influence; years, decades, possibly centuries pass as it traveled the stars at a rate that approaches a speed that stars' light passes through the void. Only when it reaches a certain point, do the systems revive and continue the next course of activity. Computer systems send a signal to a series of hibernation tubes. It is the next team's job to take the raw data and see if the information is worth additional investigation, or if they bypass the system.

An error; the team's hibernation tubes respond with no viable life signs. The computer consults it's instructions in a millisecond, and triggers the revival of the second team. Another error received from its internal readings; no viable life signs. The third, fourth and all consecutive revival commands meet the same error, no viable life signs detected. Emergency protocols go into effect, if service crew does not respond, revive non-crew passengers. Commands go out across lines not used in centuries, real-time; error...error...error.

The same error across six thousand two-hundred and seventy-two capsules, no responses, and no viable life-signs detected.

Catastrophic failure of all life-systems was not considered a possibility in the ship's design. There are no emergency protocols for a complete loss of crew without the destruction of the ship itself. The computer has no decision tree for such an event. Without additional decision options, the computer goes into dormancy until it receives additional input.

A single monitor shows a long curving trajectory that enters a system, curves around and finally ends at the third planet around its single yellow star. An error light blinks on a control board in a color invisible to human eyes. There is a response; something nearly silent shifts, it bends down and hard-taloned fingers brush across the control surface. Like the computer that displays the error, there is no decision tree that recognizes what to do with the error, so a glistening black figure simply moves away and disappears into the ship's corridors.

*

"Yo' Taylor, catch!"

Taylor looked up from his reading in time to see a drink canister float lazily through the cabin towards him in an arc only possible under limited-G. He followed the drink's trajectory a moment, and he snagged the drink out of the air in an almost unconscious gesture. Huh, fake iced coffee again. He grimaced, but cracked the drink and took a careful swig of the contents, while the person who tossed it, a lean black woman in blue jumpsuit, crossed the cabin.

They say familiarity breeds content, and while in most other places the woman, with her fine features, and the way her curves filled out the jumpsuit rather well would get second looks, or even catcalls, around here she just was another of the long-haul crew. She swung into the hammock next to Taylor and looked over his shoulder down his medium sized frame, with his rather classic Nordic features and blonde hair,

"So, what did you get on this month's tight-beam? Hope you didn't waste your bandwidth allowance on porn like Gerry did."

Taylor grimaced a bit, as Gerry's 'activities' commonly leaked out to other crewmembers, giving little mystery to what he did when another info drop delivered his usual load of girl/girl, guy/guy and well...whatever else he can imagine for his monthly allocation.

"No," Taylor replied, "Just catching up on some of the research articles coming out these days. It looks like they are finally getting a handle on that quantum entanglement stuff. If they do, info dumps will be a thing of the past. Think real-time communication, no matter how far away from the two points."

He automatically shifted a little, so the woman, Lina, as he noted with half his mind could read a bit over his shoulder. The two were used to sharing space, on their ship, like all ships, space was at a premium, and living in close-quarters became the norm.

"Really? That could certainly be useful, it'd be nice to get better up-to-date prices on material, so we could get a better handle on what asteroids we need to harvest."

She reached out and snagged the e-reader from Taylor and flipped through a few pages of the article, while Taylor leaned back,

"Do you really think that's the best use for the technology? Getting every last penny out of your share? I mean come on, this could lead to real progress on interstellar travel, or at least we could look into getting out to the outer planets with a stable communication system. Also, it doesn't matter all that much what we bring back, it's all in demand."

Lina grinned and tossed the pad lightly onto the table next to the hammocks, then reached out and tugged Taylor's hammock over closer to hers,

"Maybe it will be for the 'good of humanity' but every few credits I get on every share is that fewer number of credits I need before I can retire...maybe even buy a plot on one of those artificial islands off of Greenland."

She leaned in and kissed Taylor lightly on his lips, and he responded by slipping an arm around her body and gathering her into his hammock so she pressed closely to him. This kind of familiarity had nothing to do with contempt, and Lina's eyes gleamed with amusement as she looked to Taylor,

"Heck, it might even net me enough credit that I could afford a place big enough that I wouldn't mind a visitor, now and again," she teased him as she kissed Taylor on the corners of his lips. He smiled in response as he replied,

"Oh, now and again, hmm? I suppose you could find a spot in the corner somewhere, maybe on the couch, right?"

She unzipped his jumpsuit and trailed kisses down his chest before she looked up and replied,

"Well, as long as you didn't mind pulling your own weight around the house, of course," she certainly made him guess what kind of 'weight' she meant as her hand crept down underneath his zipper and travelled down towards his growing arousal.

Then the PA crackled to life, and the calm, modulated voice interface of the computer rang out around the cabin.

"Priority one, attention, priority one message from Earth. All crew, please report to the bridge. Repeat, Priority One Message from Earth, all crew report to the bridge."

Taylor groaned, even as Lina extracted her hand from his half-done jumpsuit, while they both carefully rolled out of the hammock and dropped to the floor. Lina grumbled even as she headed toward the ladder.

"This better be important, we were just getting rolling and had some tasty bits of heavy metals on the leash out there."

"Well, if they can't wait until our normal com cycle, it must be important, they'd have to repurpose a communication satellite to pinpoint us in the field, and that's time and energy."

"It can't be worth the time and energy we were about to 'expend'," she grumbled again as she ascended the ladder.

Looking up at Lina's behind as it rolled in the jumpsuit as she climbed, Taylor had to agree.

*

"What are we looking at?"

Taylor looked over to Allan, a big barrel-chested man that doubled as loadmaster and engineer for their ship. Irish as a big part of his bloodline, he had the red hair, big body and big personality that only came from generations of drinkers. He leaned against the bridge doorframe as the last to arrive of the eight person long-haul crew.

Besides Lina, Taylor and Allan, was Gerry, their navigator. He was a bit, twitchy, and scrawny even before the basic rations and low-g thinned him out. Then Laurence, or Lou, One of their two specialist trained mining surveyors. He was old-school Texan, and like Allan seemed way too big for the confined space of their ship. He sometimes hauled the smaller asteroids around by hand, rather than breaking them up or leaving them to loaders. Michelle or Mika was the other of the couple, and a couple they were, though her small, Asian features seemed a tough match for the big man. She had him all beat on knowing almost instinctively which asteroids had the good veins of ore and no one could match her speed or accuracy with a loader. Connell, from Scotland functioned as their cook, medic, and system catch all. Supposedly, he and Allan got into mining together, and the crew knew they shared a bed from time to time. Lastly was the captain Alex. The dark-haired, tanned skin (even for some reason on long runs,) Spanish woman owned the ship outright, but since all their product ended up bought by one or two companies, she often was at their mercy when it came to 'special requests'.

The captain had the main cabin display set in four windows, with IR, Visual, LIDAR and an orbital map on view...though what they displayed was odd. The various crewmembers sat or drifted in various places around the cabin, here they couldn't bother with the spin that gave the living quarters their partial gravity.

"Well, what we're looking at...is an object." Alex shrugged, "At least that's all they're calling it. One of the probes going out-system caught this thing coming in-system and it managed some readings before whatever it was blasted it out of space by its shockwave."

"Wait, "Taylor began, "Shockwave? What shockwave in space? Do you know how fast you'd have to be going to..." He stopped,

"Yup," Alex responded, while she looked directly at Taylor, "Magnetic shockwave from pushed particles, as near as we can tell, this object was travelling at about .75 cee."

Murmurs started around the cabin, before Allan spoke up,

"Three-quarters of the speed of light...for an object to have that much energy. If it hit something, " he paused, "wait...didn't you say 'was travelling'?"

Alex nodded again, her face unreadable, "That's right...was. By the time Earth received the probe readings and trained their lenses on that patch of space, the object decelerated to something much more resembling what we would consider in-system speeds. It's still incredibly fast, but on a controllable, and...predictable trajectory." She pointed at the orbital map, which showed a dotted line coming into the system that ended around Earth.

Lina blinked and looked at the map, "Wait, it decelerated, and its heading for Earth? Are we talking a ship? Actual alien life here?"

"We're not supposed to say that, but reading beneath the lines, that's what the people on the ground assume. Yes."

Gerry gulped in his nervous way and looked at all four readouts, "So, ummm...what does that have to do with us? Surely they have protocols, and procedures, and rules, and all of that for if something like this happens."

Alex sighed and nodded, "They do, unfortunately, and we're it. We've been drafted as the only vessel that can potentially intercept the object before it reaches the inner planets. Seeing that we've got the necessary high-gain communication gear, the sensors that can be repurposed from mining to get as much data as possible, and some level of defensive gear, they've decided it's our job to head out and greet out new visitors."

Mika raised a hand, and with a nod from Alex spoke up, "Defensive gear? Any species that can do...that is likely going to shrug off anything we can use on them."

Alex shrugged again, "I think so too, but it's their decision. If we refuse, we can forget ever working again, and hey, if we do make first contact, you all can probably look forward to never having to do a real day of work again for the rest of your lives." She scrubbed her face with both hands and looked over the crew,

"Look, the decision's been made, and I've already agreed. Gerry, your job is to plot us a course to get us out to that ship as quickly as possible and match their trajectory. Don't worry about fuel; just leave us enough to get home. The rest of you, secure everything, and let's get the ship ready to say hi to our new guests."

*

"Well...it's big,"

Taylor looked at the display screen, which was the only thing that gave any sense of the real size of the ship that floated off their port side. Their ship had no 'windows' per say, but carefully placed and shielded cameras piped images from outside to monitors wherever the crew wished. Right now, every available camera, every display showed the massive structure beside it.

Big certainly seemed an understatement when they considered the ship next to them; according to their devices it measured something along the lines of 6 kilometers from the front to the back. At least, they had to assume it was the front, as it was the direction of travel for the massive cylindrical vessel.

"What do you suppose that is?" Mika asked as she looked at a picture they took on their initial 'pass' around the ship.

The picture showed a massive funnel shaped structure that made up the majority of the bow of the ship. It narrowed from a 'modest' 1.5 km across down to the ship's 1km diameter. The rest of the hull stayed almost uniformly cylindrical, few extrusions indicated antennae, sensors, or much of anything. At the back of the ship, and just behind the funnel in front, multiple bulbous extrusions, hundreds of meters in size, circled the outer circumference of the cylinder. In 'back' extended what could only be exhaust or engine tubes of some kind, equally scaled up for the massive structure.

Allan looked up from his readings and looked over to the picture Mika observed,

"If the magnetic readings are trustworthy, I would call that a massive matter scoop. If their technology resembles anything we can understand, they probably use that to draw in reaction mass for...whatever they use for power."

Alex looked over to Allan,

"And can we give any estimates as to what, exactly that is?"

She, like all the other crew, was strapped into their stations in the negligible G of free-flight in space. Each person had their own readings they studied from their initial pass.

In the weeks of transit time between initial detection and contact, the crew had time to make a few plans and rig their ship for maximum defense, and sensors. They finally settled on a high-speed initial pass to grab any sensor readings and see if they provoked a response of any kind, and then an eventual deceleration to rejoin the traveler ship on a tandem trajectory towards Earth.

The initial pass over the traveler ship, during which they screamed past fast enough that they only managed a few visual inspections and spectral readings, provoked no response that they could detect. So they came back at more of a 'mosey' until they aligned with the ship.

They floated alongside it, relative speeds nullified as they considered the information they gathered. Their computers cycled through a series of mathematical formulas, greetings in each language, and star-maps and other galactic images beamed directly at the vessel. So far they'd received no response.

"Right now, I wouldn't even want to hazard a guess what could propel something like this up to .75 cee," Allan replied, "We're picking up thermal readings that might indicate reactors of...some kind, maybe nuclear, maybe fusion throughout whatever that is. It is definitely radiating heat, they probably like it warm in there," he concluded.

"And what did 'they' make their ship out of, any ideas Lou?"

"I'm actually reading pretty standard material makeup Captain. Spectral analysis reads titanium, carbon, probably graphene or something similar to carbon nanotubing, alloys of steel and aluminum. Given enough materials, we could probably make something similar," Lou chewed tapped his personal vaporizer against his teeth with a light click as he considered, "Nothing really...exotic, at least, nothing we can read from here. Looks like lots of empty space in there, but then, there would have to be, wouldn't there?"

"We don't know that, we haven't received any kind of response, after all, it could be their equivalent of a probe, or something," Alex commented as she looked at the ship thoughtfully.

"A probe?" That was Lina, as she looked up from her console, "Who would make something like this as a probe? Just the material costs alone are insane, and where would they send the information? It would take decades before it got anywhere meaningful."

"We can't assume that they can't afford either materials or time," Alex replied, "again, a race that can somehow get...that up to a good chunk of light speed might have a different sense of scale then we do."

She shook her head and looked over the display,

"We've been here for hours now...and there's been no response," that directed at Taylor,

"No Captain," he replied after a quick check at his instruments, "Nothing we can read, anyway."

"All right, well...we've rung the doorbell, I suppose it's time to go up and knock on the door. Is there anything that looks like a docking port, or even an airlock on that thing?" She looked quickly over various scans they'd taken on their second, more leisurely pass.

"I think, I think I can see one," Gerry commented, and brought up a picture onto the main display.

The picture showed the same dull metal of the rest of the ship, but to the side was an indentation framed with heavier looking material. He zoomed in the display enough that the rest of the crew could see a control pad of some kind on the side, though no writing or other decoration indicated its purpose.

"That's about a quarter from the front of the ship and lines up pretty much in the middle of what we'd call the 'side'," he gulped again, "It's also roughly our size. If I'm reading this right, it's a little over two meters tall."

"If you can't think of anything more suitable," Alex paused, long enough that Gerry shook his head jerkily, "All right, bring us alongside and level with that entrance. Get the docking curtain ready, and Lou, Allan, get suited up so you can secure it. Be careful though; make sure your packs are charged so you can get away in a hurry if you need it."

The two men looked to Alex, looked at each other and then nodded, before they turned and left the bridge.

*

The docking curtain was a somewhat simple affair, really. Crew used it when there were no 'actual' docking facilities in place, but you needed to connect your airlock to another hard surface in space. It consisted of a long, extendable tube around a heavy titanium frame so that it maintained some level of rigidity. After Gerry maneuvered their ship to within ten meters of the 'door' Allan and Lou in their space suits detached the lock from the side of their ship, and using their RCS packs, 'dragged' the curtain across the intervening space to the door in the side of the other ship.

They barely spoke, except for the occasional 'careful' and motion adjustments until they reached the side of the intruding ship. There was a noticeable hesitation when they reached the side of the ship, until they put their feet down and locked the magnetic boots into place. When no reaction was forthcoming from the vessel, the comms carried a sigh of relief as they dropped the curtain's ring into place and hit the control. Immediately dual magnetic and thermal systems activated; the systems adhered the ring to the side of the ship and melted the surface, just a hair, just enough so that when the system cooled it formed an airtight seal around the ring.

With no further reaction to their intrusion, the two space-suit clad figures returned to the ship, ready for the next step.

*

"Why do I get to be the one who does this?"

Lina complained from her place at the end of the docking curtain, where the dull grey of the alien vessel's hull played contrast to the bright-lit white interior of the curtain.

"Because you drew the short straw, now quit screwing around and check out that console." Alex said into the microphone, where she watched Lina as she floated in the docking tube.

She wore a spacesuit, even in the pressurized environment just in case, but the faceplate was open, and one glove floated attached to the sleeve, two pieces that any one of them could get in place in moments.

"Ok, well...I'm right in front of it. It looks like a keypad of some kind, but I can't see any markings. It's also not a ten key; it looks like...twelve keys below a display of some kind."

"Proceeded, touch the controls; see if you can open it."

"I have no idea why you expect me to figure out an alien control system..." Lina muttered as she reached forward and ran her fingers across the controls, "There's no light, but...hold on, these are warm." She pressed a couple of buttons, while she worried her lower lip. She hmmed thoughtfully, she could feel differences in temperatures as she ran her fingertips over the controls, "Just a second," she put down her visor, and activated one of the many alternate cameras that fed images to her hud, copied up to the displays on the bridge.

"Ah hah, there are controls here, but they're in the infrared spectrum, and there is a heat component. Whatever uses this must have a much lower visual wavelength."

"What do you think the markings mean?" Taylor looked at the fed through display at the various marks, which looked nothing more than scratches in various lengths and configurations.

"Well, if they're anything like our control panels, they're probably numbers," Connel answered, "Keep a picture of that, if we assume numbers then it might give us a basis for translations. I tend to be a touch handy with languages." He commented a little sheepishly to Alex.

She nodded in reply and returned to the screen. "Is there any way to open it?"

"Yes...I think I see a seam..." Lina replied, as she grabbed a tool from her belt and waved it across the panel, "Huh, held magnetically, well...I suppose that's secure enough if you have the excess power, and it makes it easy to do this." She swept another device across the panel, which responded by detaching easily from the ship's hull, revealing a tangle of wires behind.

"Looks like...all fiber optics, but there's a few that I suspect are power...hold on a second."

Taylor strained as he tried to see what Lina was doing, but she moved and blocked the camera, he switched to the suit camera in time to see a flash, hear a sizzle and a curse from the mic.

"Lina, are you ok?" He asked quickly,

"Yeah, damnit, just...forced a short..." she replied, "The suit insulated me...and what do you know?"

There on the screen, a crack appeared at the edge of the door, and a low hissing could be heard over the microphone,

"Button your suit, quick!" Alex practically shouted into the mic.

"Yeah yeah," Lina replied, as she put her glove in place, sealed her faceplate, and leaned close to the crack, "Hellooo? Anyone home?" She called in a singsong voice.

Allan gestured to Alex to get her attention, "Readings in the curtain say that venting gasses are Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon Dioxide, and trace other gasses."

Alex blinked, "So...air?"

He nodded, "Yes, air...and though the percentages are a bit off Earth normal, we'd have very few problems breathing it safely."

Alex looked thoughtfully at the display; Lina already pried open the door another few inches. She banged a spanner on the door, on the frame, and inside, all while calling "Hellooooo hello! Avon calling!"

Lina turned back and looked directly into the camera,

"It looks like nobody's home. Wanna go see if mommy and daddy left us some new toys to play with while they're gone?"

She grinned widely; while behind her the door gaped open those few inches as an open invitation to the crew.

*

Six crew members assembled into the chamber they all agreed was an airlock of some kind. Alex and Gerry remained at their stations on the ship and monitored the camera and sensor feeds from the others as they stood around in pressure suits. These suits did not have the full protection of space suits, but they had their own independent air if needed, and in an emergency could protect the user for a few minutes in vacuum, in exchange, they were much less bulky.

The six team members had full tool and repair kits on hand, while Taylor, Allan, and Lou had packs on with leads to large hand-carried mining lasers as improvised defensive weapons.

When they'd initially crossed into the airlock, there had been a moment of surprise when they'd all settled down to the 'floor'. Allan reached down and touched the floor, while he grunted, "Huh, Artificial gravity. That's a new one. Seems a touch lighter then Earth normal...but still."

Lina fiddled with the internal controls of the outer door, working with a wire diagram analyzer and optic reader."These guys, or girls, whatever," she started, "may have us beat out in some areas, but in others, their tech seems like it works a lot like ours. I bet if you gave me some time with whatever they call their central system, I could end up running this place....like so!" She concluded with a flourish, as the outer door closed, and the inner door opened.

"Software may be different, but hardware is always the same," she grinned, "there are only so many ways you can connect wires to make a door move...so then boys, after you?" She gestured magnanimously towards the open inner hatch.

Taylor nodded and stepped through, laser held in front of him carefully.

"It is warm..." he said as he felt the warmth of the local atmosphere on his skin, "air tastes clean though, but it's dim. I think you are right about different sight."

There was enough light to see, but their shoulder lamps swept across the room and illuminated what would be pre-dawn gloom to normal humans. The dry air smelled different from their recycled air, it seemed, fresher, and had none of the metallic taste they'd all grown used to. Mika moved over to the side of the room, where four suits lined the walls, hooked into some kind of closet or station.

"Well...I think we can rule out unmanned probe," she began, "why would you put space suits into a probe?"

"So where are they?" Collen continued as he joined her, "These guys look like they'd be hard to miss."

Alex, on the bridge, had to agree. From two perspectives she could see the suits, which were as large as the airlock they'd entered. At just over two meters tall, the suits were bipedal, but with a reversed joint where the 'knee' would be. Two pairs of arms extended from the suit, two larger ones that extended from the shoulders, the fingers ending just above those reversed knee, and two smaller ones extended from the chest, with three-prong pincers on the end. The image shifted, and Alex realized that Collen had moved to look into the chest cavity of the suit.

"I don't think those secondary arms are for their arms," he commented, "I don't see where you'd put a second set here...so, maybe...Waldos of some kind?"

Another room exit slid open silently as Lou approached it. He looked out into a small circular chamber, with corridors going bow-wards, sternwards, and towards the center of the ship.

"Three corridors, six of us, pairs?" he questioned, while he gestured left and right with the mining tool.

"Agreed," Alex responded over the com, "You know the pairs that work best...so let's get to it. Lina, Taylor, you two head towards the center of the ship. In something like this, I bet they keep the bridge as protected as possible. Lou and Mika, head towards the stern, see if you can find a reactor, or engine room, or anything that explains how this thing runs. Connel, you and Alan head to the bow, if that is a giant magnetic scoop, it has to channel that matter somewhere, see if you can find it. Keep in constant contact over coms, and if anyone sees anything that might be alive, get the hell back to the ship as quickly as you can."

*

Lina and Taylor's heavy boots clumped on the metal decks beneath their feet as they walked down a long, wide corridor towards the center of the ship. Taylor walked ahead with the drill pointed somewhat in front of them, though in the past hour, they'd seen nothing that moved. The pair passed door after door, and after the sixth room that looked like a bunk, or an eating area, the two agreed that they'd more likely better serve as they tried finding the bridge.

Lina walked along behind him with a piece of chalk and lightly marked the wall as they passed. Taylor glanced back and threw her an annoyed look,

"Do you have to do that? Our internal systems are mapping this place as we go, if we need to, it can get us back."

Lina grinned and threw him a wink, "Maybe, but what if something happens to our suits? Haven't you ever heard the story about the Labyrinth?"

"What's that?" he replied absently, as he continued walking slowly. After the first thirty minutes of walking they'd met up with a larger corridor, something that seemed like ran from bow to stern of the vessel. They were now following this corridor, hoping it went...somewhere.

"It's an old story in Greek mythology. An ancient king had a cursed monster called a Minotaur beneath his castle. He trapped it in a huge maze so complex; no one could ever get out. He would take people that displeased him and he'd drop them into the maze. The Minotaur knew every nook and cranny, but they'd get lost until the Minotaur found them, and ate them."

Taylor grimaced, but glanced back to Lina, "So what does that have to do with us?"

"Well, some hero or other learned about the Minotaur and plotted how to kill him. He got the king to throw him in the Labyrinth, but he'd hidden a ball of string, which he used to mark his way around the maze, that way when he killed the Minotaur, he'd be able to find his way back. See? This is our ball of string!"

Taylor managed a little smile, and then winked, "Yes, but if that's our ball of string, you are telling me that there's a Minotaur somewhere in here."

She stuck her tongue out at him, "Well, maybe...but you'd think if there was something in here, it would have found us by now."

"Maybe they're just watching us, to see if we're worth contacting or not," he suggested.

"I somehow doubt they would let us all the way...oh wait, here!" She said as she pointed excitedly ahead.

Their lights illuminated the end of the corridor, which stopped at a door at least twice the size of the previous ones they'd passed. Lina excitedly pushed past Taylor, who started to object, but she was already through the door and into the room beyond. He shook his head and followed behind her and entered the room.

"This has to be it, this is the bridge." Lina said excitedly, and after a moment Taylor agreed.

The room was huge, circular, at least fifteen meters across. In the center was a console of some kind with what looked like a high-backed chair, though it looked like it accommodated the knee-back design of the suits they'd found earlier. In front a half-circle of keyboards circled the station. Around the outside of the room similar chairs faced a variety of consoles and monitors set into the walls in every direction. Four exits surrounded the cardinal points, all of which had the same heavy doors. Lina practically bounced from console to consol as she excitedly touched panels and ran her hands along raised sections.

"Careful with that, you don't know...you might, I don't know, trigger the engines, or something," Taylor warned, while he looked up into a domed ceiling, at least eight or nine meters high.

"Oh...I'm not activating anything," Lina complained, "Just getting a lay of the land; it looks like they're like that door panel. Everything is warmer or cooler, and there are these marks I can only see in the infrared." She blinked and walked over to the central chair and console, "What is this..." she said as she reached out, "It's pulsing..." she ran her fingertips over the surface, and then pulled away her hand, "Ewwww."

"What, what?" Taylor asked in a worried fashion, as he hurried over and grabbed her hand,

"No, it's nothing, just something sticky...slimy kinda." She spread her fingers, showing off clear goo as it stretched and dripped from her fingers.

"It wasn't anywhere else," she explained as she glanced over her suit, "and suit filters aren't picking up anything in the air, I wonder what it is." She hmmed and shrugged, then flicked her fingers to the side, "Maybe their mechanic spilled some lube or something."

"Yeah, or something," Taylor looked at her sideways, "Just...be a little more careful, ok?"

Lina awwed and grinned, then kissed him on the cheek, "Oh, don't worry my hero, I don't doubt you can kill the minotaur, and then your faithful companion will show you the string to find your way back out of the maze."

*

Towards the front of the ship Connel and Alan walked along another large corridor, somewhere closer to the center of the ship. They too, ignored the various doors to either side the hallway, while Connel checked the growing map transmitted to their suits as the other two teams spread out and explored the ships, he whistled deep and low as the map grew.

"It looks like Lina and Taylor found the bridge," he commented, "this place is just huge inside here though, I wonder how many beings use, or well, used this to travel."

Alan glanced around as they passed another door, he tapped on it, when it didn't open, he continued on before he answered, the drill held at the ready, military style.

"You got me, but in a place like this we could probably fit in a few thousand citizens, and have plenty of room to spread out." He glanced around, "If this was one of our theoretical designs for an interstellar vessel, you'd almost have to plan for potential population growth planning. Even at .75 cee some distances to other stars would take years. You'd need plenty of power, food, recyclables,"

Connel blinked as he looked forward, "Wait...that magnetic scoop up front; you said it might be for reaction mass, I wonder if it." He hmmed and then tapped his comm, "Alex, I know you're listening, can you bring up our trajectory map?"

As the map interposed itself into the small monitor on the suit he tsked, and nodded, "This ship is going to go right through the asteroid belt. It could have easily missed it, but this looks like a deliberate pass-through, so not just reaction mass...but raw material resupply?"

Alan thought about that as he took another look around, and somehow to Connel's eye, picked a turn at random which seemed like it might lead deeper into the ship,

"Could be...in which case, maybe the fly-by earth is the same. You know, roll by, take a swoop through the atmosphere to gather up the stuff they need to replenish their recycling systems, then keep going. If this ship is going somewhere to meet up with her crew, it might explain why it came here. Our system is similar enough; it could get what it needed here."

"Yeah but those would have to be some really efficient energy conversion systems to get enough resupply to make up for the power and fuel costs in braking and reacceleration."

"Well, we haven't found the engines yet, have we...buuutt....I think we found what we're looking for."

Alan stopped abruptly, while Connel nearly bumped into him from behind in front of two huge doors in the middle of the widening corridor. There was nothing that they could recognize as a sign system, but Alan confidently put down the cutter and set a pry-bar into the seam between the doors.

"Hey, are you sure you want to do that...?" Connel started, while Alan simply pushed the pry bar. The doors, after a moment initial resistance, swooshed open so quickly that Alan nearly dropped the metal. At the same time Lina's voice chimed up through the com,

"Hiya guys, I'm still figuring things out, my data taps are working overdrive, but I think I can at least control the doors consistently now. Soooo...just let me know when you want me to play concierge and get things opened for you."

"Yeah Lina, thanks for warning us," Alan said before he picked up the cutter and walked through the doors. Connel came behind and stopped, this time for the same reason that stopped the larger man,

"Holy..." he breathed and for once, Alan had nothing to say.

The room they entered must have taken up more than two-thirds of the interior diameter of the ship. If there was any question to the capabilities of the huge scoop at the front, this room put those to rest. The room itself was several hundred meters long, with railings, crossways and gantries skirting all around the outer edge. The metal framed a huge funnel looking device, surrounded by what could only be huge capacitors and magnets of various kinds. Huge sparks arced across various devices, and cables as tall as the two of them on top of each other stretched across the room to ports along the walls. It looked like a giant funnel squid with a mouth over half a kilometer wide decided to take up residence inside the ship, and was ready to eat anything that came across its path.

"Alex...this, this is incredible," Connel started, "I think, we might...we might be looking at not just a matter scoop,"

His voice stalled as he lost words for how to describe the sight, but he didn't have to as seemingly spontaneously a flare of light nearly blinded him at the front of the structure. Pulses of electricity arced from the front of the funnel down along the sides, apparently following something caught in the funnel. The pulses followed down the main channel, and then split off into various extended tubes and cables coming off the main device.

"Ummm, Alex, did we just...hit something?"

"Yes, a wandering asteroid from the belt...this ship just...swallowed it."

"Yeah, we just watched it process the whole thing," Alan spoke up, "I can't tell you how finely they refined it, but it looks like this thing just broke it up and sent it wherever it needed to go, all in about 30 seconds. That would be a hell of a way to process loads of ore," he said almost wonderingly.

"Well, until we figure it out, we'll just have to keep doing it the old fashioned way, get as much recording as you can though, we'll send it back along with everything else."

"Right," Alan replied, "Capture it all on digital, we might get a little interference though, there's a lot of arcing going on through here, so let us know if anything else comes up."

The big man looked over to Connel and flashed a rare grin,

"Well, come along then you Scottish bastard, finally time to put you to work."

"Only if it means your lazy Irish ass actually gets it in gear too, those things may be the size of cabers, but I doubt they'd take as kindly to tossing," Connel replied with a matching grin, before they started taking in the measure of the huge room.

*

Further down the ship, a door opened into yet another massive chamber, one that hit Mika and Lou with a wave of fragrance, scents, and colors in abundance. Immediately Mika slapped down her pressure suit's faceplate, and did the same to Lou's, provoking a protest.

"Hey, what did you do that for?"

"I'm sorry husband, but as you can see, I think we've found their green house." She gestured into the room beyond.

The first impression of the room beyond was a sea of purples, reds and greens, everywhere their lights reached, leaves, vines and mosses covered every available surface and extended dozens of meters into an artificial 'sky'. Above them, light rails spaced evenly through the ceiling shed bright, natural seeming light into the huge room. The plants stretched upwards without restraint, and when Mika stepped forward, her boot squished lightly into a floor covered in some kind of grassy moss.

"Ok, so they're plants, at least we know how they're supplementing their air, what's so bad about that?"

"Well husband...I'd prefer not to lose you to some kind of alien pollen, spore, or mold that we have no idea about. Who knows, something here could turn you polka-dotted," she continued in a gently amused tone.

"Oh...right, thanks then," he replied as he looked around, "it is pretty though, and the lighting is...brighter than the rest of the ship." He took a few steps into the space, looked around and pointed the laser drill into the various kinds of foliage. He pushed it aside as he looked at the ground, "and it's real dirt..." he continued.

"I think...it would almost have to be," Mika agreed, "I mean if Earth is an attractive stop for them, even if they see in lower wavelengths, their plants must photosynthesize in a similar manner, right?' She lightly fingered a broad-leafed, waxy plant, tsking when her gloved fingers found a series of sharp spines along the under spine of the leaf, "definitely not one of our more friendly species of plants though."

Lou took a few steps deeper into the jungle, "Still...it certainly makes our oxy recyc system seem puny in comparison, if that's what they use exclusively, then the conversion rate on this stuff must be great. Wanna snag a few samples for the science guys?"

Mika nodded and pulled out a couple of self-sealing vacuum bags. She pulled a pair of snips from her tool belt and clipped off one of the glossy leaves and put it into the bag. The sample bag hissed as it auto-sealed around the sample. She took a couple additional samples from the vines and mosses before she turned back to Lou,

"That should do for now...we should get going and find the engines, like Alex wanted."

Lou nodded in response and opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off as their comms crackled to life,

"Lou, Mika, this is Alex...I'm putting a marker on your internal maps. Meet everyone else there; it looks like Lina found the crew."

Lou raised an eyebrow and looked to Mika before he touched the com control, "Roger Alex, we're on our way," he looked to Mika and continued, "I guess we finally get to see what might have made such a thing, then abandoned it to us, right?"

Not speaking, Mika simply nodded slowly, and absently tucking the vacuum pouch into a pocket, followed Lou out of the chamber.

After they left, less than a meter from where Mika gathered her sample, something dark, something glossy shifted and moved in the foliage...then a moment later was gone.

*

"What the hell is all this?" Lou asked the other five people standing next to him.

The six of them followed the mapped waypoint, after Lina managed to coax a rudimentary interface from the ship's systems. She'd spotted something with what should have been massive power requirements and redundancies, but was somehow dormant in a room in the middle of the ship, not too far from the main bridge. All six of them assembled there, greeted with an unusual and grisly sight.

Before them were rows and rows of what could only be called 'capsules' of some kind. Thousands of them all together and in each one was an alien or at least, the remains of an alien.

"I think...this was supposed to be a colony ship," Lina said, remarkably hesitant, apparently affected by the destruction in front of them.

Each chamber originally looked like it held one inhabitant, with heavy glass or plastic over a capsule system which held what looked like a reptilian species of some kind. The overall form was humanoid, with large, bulky muscles in their upper body and shoulders, which trimmed down to slender legs with the reversed knee they'd seen in the suits. Their faces looked squished in, with slits for noses, and an extended mandible that almost looked like a beak, like a turtle.

Every tube, all of them, was smashed open and the creature inside obviously dead from some massive physical trauma. What could only be dried blood; a deep orange-brown color stained every tube's inner surface and splattered the exterior surfaces. From the look, the blood was old, very old indeed.

"From...what I can piece together, their computer systems are not too different than ours. They umm, use a base 12 math system, but from there Ii was able to at least translate their maps and travel logs. It looks like this ship has been to a half dozen systems, stopped at individual planets, and then continued on."

"They were looking for a new home," Connel murmured, "and not finding it, perhaps?"

Lina nodded, "That's what I think too. I think Earth just happened to be another...possible."

"So what the hell caused all of this?" Alan demanded as he gestured, "They look like they've all been chewed up and spat out, while they were still asleep even."

"I don't know...I can get the system maps and travel figures and figure those out, but their language, that's another story. Just, when the computer tried to wake them up this time, they were all...like this."

Taylor's arm squeezed around Lina's shoulder encouragingly, while he gestured up to the bodies with the cutter, "We don't know what caused this...maybe one of their crew went nuts and killed all the others. We certainly haven't seen anything else alive around here, have we?"

Alex's voice crackled over the com system, "Taylor's right. So we know who used to live here, and I'm sure the science guys at the company will want to examine those things down to the microscopic level, but that doesn't change much of what we need to do here. We still need to find the engines and the power generators. Lina, you know where those are, right?"

Lina nodded quickly, "I think so, yeah...I've set up a relay between my processor on the bridge and my hand-held here. It will keep working on figuring out how to talk to their computers, and I can get all that info down here. I think...maybe, if we get to the engine rooms, by then I'll have some way of controlling their systems."

Mika spoke up, "So what, we just forget that something killed all these living things? We salvage this ship like it's a trophy prize?"

Alex chimed in again, "That's what we do, after all...I doubt they're going to complain, and with this I bet you can all plan on your retirement."

Lou nudged Mika, "There's an old maritime law about derelict ships, it's called 'finder's keepers' sweetie, and this is certainly a find for us."

"All right," Alan said, "Let's all go this time though, we can stick together and see about getting control of things, just to be safe."

*

Gerry tapped a control on the keyboard, which cut off the com to the crew in the ship, and looked up to Alex, "A...are you sure about this? I mean, I don't think the company is just going to let us claim ownership of the first ever interstellar ship in human history."

Alex glanced over to Gerry for a moment and looked out at the display, filled with the hull of the massive ship that flew alongside it, "I don't see how they can stop us now. Drafted or not, they say that possession is nine-tenths of the law, and we have that ship now. By the time we get in-system, I plan on knowing every inch of its hull and how it works, and they can beg us for a piece of the technology we're going to get off that thing."

Alex turned back and touched a couple of controls on the display and brought up a split view of the six crewmembers as they marched down the hallway. Their breathing came through their mics in harsh contrast to the silence of vacuum outside,

"If we play it right, we just might have everyone begging us for a piece."

Gerry merely shook his head and returned to monitoring their forward trajectory and any potential obstacles on their course to Earth.

Neither paid any attention to the small display that showed the docking curtain, the open door from their ship to the bigger alien ship, and the dark figure that appeared in front of the camera for just a moment, before it crossed quickly from one ship to the other, and out of sight of the camera again.

*

"Well boss, are we there yet? I'm starting to get a bit overheated here."

Lou fanned himself in the growing heat and pulled the collar of his pressure suit away for a moment as he panted,

"Whomever those poor saps were, they must really have liked the heat, I can't think of any design where we'd want to vent our generator's waste heat to the _inside_of the ship," Lou continued, while he kept the laser slung over his shoulder.

Lina glanced down at the screen linkup to her systems in the main bridge and gestured up ahead,

"Well, we'll figure it out soon enough, according to this map; the engineering section is just up ahead. Pretty much all primary systems route through there, maybe they just like to combine their mess with their reactor technology. I mean, haven't you ever tried cooking dinner on a car engine before?"

Alan snorted,

"You've gotta be kidding me, like you'd get any decent heat out of the commuters they have these days,"

"Nah, I'm talking old school, combustion engines, gas powered. My family had an old one when I was a kid," Lina replied and grinned, "Made a noise like a big cat growling, but man did that engine stink with the substitute fuel we had to put through it."

Mika glanced over as they continued walking,

"Well, it serves you right for keeping an old, polluting relic like that...and what is this?"

The group just turned the corner of a corridor, and found that they faced a corridor, altered from the rest of the ship. Long, green black arches of some kind of dense material coated the ceiling, walls and floor. Their lights disappeared quickly into gloom almost as though the matte walls soaked it up and refused to let it go.

Connel stepped forward and ran his hand over it, then drew his hand up and snapped off a chunk, which clung to his gloved hand as he looked over it.

"I don't know...maybe it's their heat transfer material? If they really are trying to bleed their heat into the ship, this stuff could make a decent carrier. It's certainly warm."

He lifted it to his nose and inhaled slightly, "Stinks though, so maybe they don't come down here much, if they have a sense of smell anything like ours." He shrugged and shook it off his hand and dropped it to the floor.

"I'll have to ask the computer," Lina began, "But it wasn't on any of the maps...but they could just be the basic outline of the place."

Taylor hmmed as he stepped forward, noticing a moment how the material stuck and made each step just a bit more difficult, "Seems kind of odd that they'd have it on the floors though," he commented, as he took a couple more steps in and then shrugged, "It's not too bad...but who knows, this could be a byproduct, something they usually clean out, and it's been gathering for who knows how long."

Mika used a knife and cut off a small section and dropped it into a sample bag, at a questioning look she replied,

"I doubt I'm damaging anything significant by taking this sample, and well...this umm, resin might have some interesting properties." She stuffed the bag into one of the suit's pockets before she stepped forward, "We might get more answers in main engineering though, right?" She looked curiously to Lina,

"Oh, yeah," she replied and gestured forward again, "It's right up there." She attempted a light smile, "Lead on all you burly men, with all your manly weapons, and stuff."

Lou merely shook his head and gave a rueful grin, before he stepped into the sticky stuff, and continued down the passageway to the spaces beyond.

*

"Taylor, Lou, Lina, can any of you read me?"

Alex hit controls on the command console, as she brought up camera after camera. The cameras were full of static, though they showed the dark material on all the surfaces as the crew moved through. The video had become somewhat distorted and broken up as soon as they'd entered the engineering area though, and Alex found she'd lost voice contact with the crew.

"Maybe it's something in their reactors," Gerry commented with another nervous swallow, "I mean, according to Lina's map, they really are right there." He blinked and hit a couple of controls, "Look, that stuff started right outside where we think all the generators are, we don't know what kind of power they use," he slowed at the look on Alex's face as she swiveled on him.

"Yeah, that has to be it," She frowned, "I just hope they don't try and keep anything back, new generator technology? Who knows, maybe some new kind of element we don't know about. There are so many things in there that could be worth a fortune."

Over the past hours of exploration, her expression had gone from eager, to positively filled with avarice, a look Gerry did not appreciate as he considered her apparent eager need to claim the whole alien ship as hers. He turned back and checked his readings again and started talking before he turned back,

"Look, according to this we still have a couple of months before this ship hits Earth orbit, and at least a few weeks before another ship can intercept, we should have plenty of time to...to...to..."

His voice caught, as something big, glossy and black had somehow entered the bridge silently without either he or Captain Alex noticing, and it was stood right behind her.

"Umm...c...captain?" He stammered fearfully, as he started backing out of his chair.

"Yes, what is it?" She glanced up irritably, before she noticed the look on his face.

A drop of something warm, slimy dripped onto the back of her neck, and a slow, low hiss started up behind her. She turned slowly, and looked up, up into the face of something out of insanity and nightmares. Two and a half meters tall, pitch black, though the bridge lights reflected off its mirror-like surface, a banana shaped head, and beneath that...all she could see was...teeth, teeth and as it hissed again, an inner mouth ringed with even more nearly clear teeth.

"W...what...bu...." she tried backing away, but two powerful arms that extended from its shoulders to its knees snapped out and caught her by her arms. Talons dug into her flesh, and she could feel the warm blood dripping down the wounds as it rose up on reverse-knee legs. She managed a low whimper, something deep and fearful from inside her throat before the inner mouth snapped forward and plunged into hers and into the soft tissues up and beyond; it only stopped when it punched through the skull on the other side.

Gerry scrambled backwards when the back of his captain's head exploded like a smashed melon. He let out a gibbering, childish scream as he ducked down and under his console as all rational thought vanished in a vision of bloody gore and the sight of Alex's body as it hit the deck with a wet thump. He tried pushing back, crawling on his hands and knees as the thing turned toward him.

Swifter then he would have thought possible, it leapt across the captain's console and landed on the deck in front of him. As it reached out a long, clawed hand all that escaped Gerry's mouth was a near incomprehensible,

"Nononononono.....Nooooo!"

The last came out as a groan of dread as the creature's hand clamped around his ankle in a near vice grip and it dragged him inexorably out from underneath the console.

Gerry turned over and screamed, clawed, thrashed, kicked back with his free foot, but none of it seemed to faze the creature in the slightest as it dragged him out. In one last, panicked moment he reached out and grabbed the console. His hands scrabbled at it as he tried to find some purchase as the creature dragged him. He barely noticed when his hand hit the thruster ignition, and the deep rumble of the engines firing up passed through the ship. His panicked thrashing hit control after control, the engines fired as he slapped the controls and the thrust jerked the ship to the side.

Gerry barely noticed any of that though; by then the creature finished with his struggling, and a long tail snapped around and swept down, its point smashed into his spine and broke it easily with a ruthless efficiency that paralyzed Gerry and left him unable to do anything but watch the floor slide by as the creature dragged him from the bridge.

*

From the outside of the ship, the engines ignited from behind and the side. Thrust engaged and propelling the ship in a twisting arc. The docking bridge twisted, reached its structural limits, and sheared free in a twisted wreck of metal and insulation. Air vented from both the alien ship and the human one as it twisted and arced up uncontrolled until it smashed heavily into the side of the alien ship, which sent debris and pieces of the human ship flying off.

Its vector changed after the collision with the larger vessel, though the momentum from the short thrust hadn't built up enough energy to leave a meaningful impact on the big interstellar ship. The smaller mining ship spiraled off on main thrusters and damaged vector thrusters. It's heading sent it eventually into the asteroid belt and on a collision course with one of the larger rocks. Tracking would eventually indicate impact and destruction of the relatively speedy little vessel.

Without the docking bridge, air streamed into space and crystallized into a glittering fountain of dust motes until safety protocols kicked in, and the inner and outer airlock doors quickly closed and sealed against the hard vacuum. Automatic computer systems triggered at the impact, analyzed their vector, their direction and altered speed, and massive engines kicked in for a burn that lasted just enough time that the ship resumed its original vector towards Earth.

*

The deck bucked underneath the group slightly, followed by a low rumble that passed through the entire vessel, gone after moments. The six humans glanced around, suddenly wary before the disturbance passed.

"What was that...it felt like the ship powered up? The engines?" Taylor glanced over to Lina, seeking confirmation, which she nodded in recognition. She tapped her comm control in response,

"Alex, what was that? It felt like the engines turned on," she paused, and when no response was forthcoming tried again, "Alex? Are you there captain? What happened?" She hmmed and tapped a couple more controls,

"Interference is bad, let me relay through my gear on the bridge," she said, suddenly looking much more serious as she furiously typed out commands on her pad.

Alan looked around and unslung the mining laser from his shoulder and looked around the corridor carefully, "I do not like this," he said as he shifted, "I think, we should head back now."

Lina held up a finger and spoke again, "Alex, are you there...can anyone on the ship hear me?" She tapped a couple more controls on her console and looked up, wide eyed, "The ship...I don't think it's there anymore."

"Wait, what?" That came from Connel, whom stepped over and looked over her shoulder, "How could the ship be gone?"

"I...I don't know," Lina said, her earlier bravado and good mood faded quickly under the circumstances, "All I know is, my box thinks the computer had a decompression alert, and now the airlock we came in is closed and secured." She tapped a couple more controls, "I'm trying to open it, but it says it won't open against hard vacuum... that means the ship is gone, right?"

Taylor stepped over and put an arm across her shoulders, "It could be moving, maybe they found an entrance closer to use," he didn't sound too convinced though, and as he looked at the pad's readout the information didn't change.

"What the hell!" Lou stormed, "Did that bitch abandon us? I mean, I know she was eager to get her hands on this ship, maybe she's gone to cement her claim, or something."

"Why abandon us then," Mika replied, "We're just getting her more information, which can only make her claim better, she gets nothing by leaving us behind."

"Well...maybe she just wants to cut us out, after all, why share, if she doesn't have to?"

"And she's what, going to just leave us here until we starve? When they do get the ship in, it might be hard to explain six human bodies here, all starved to death," Alan snorted, "No, something happened, and I really think we should get out of here," he looked to Lina, "We can hole up on the bridge until you get their systems fully worked out, and then figure out supplies and such from there," he glanced around, "Besides, this place gives me the creeps."

Lina nodded shakily in Taylor's arms, "I...I think I can do that, and Alan's right, kind of, this will go a lot faster if I'm on the bridge working on it directly." She glanced around, "We can get control, and then figure out these weird engines."

Lou turned around and looked back up the corridor, "Yeah, let's just get the hell out of here." He started marching his way back, and soon, one by one the rest of the crew followed.

Behind them, shapes along the walls moved, shifted, and a low hisss filled the air as once silent figures slipped free from alcoves and depressions in the resin. If the six figures had gone much farther, they might have encountered the creatures. Instead, the vents and conduits received new travelers as they slipped inside and away.

*

"The ship is definitely not there," Lina repeated as the six of them gathered on the bridge.

She tapped a couple of controls on her pad, and then a few on the console in front of her, then looked over the others,

"I've got a pretty good handle on their systems now, I think. At least their sensors, and the mechanicals anyway, their language is something else entirely." She shook her head slightly, "I think our linguist here will have to do something about that," she continued as she looked to Connel anxiously.

"Ummm, yeah...I've done my best with what I have, but without some kind of reference, I'm basically guessing, but I think I've got their number system down and maybe some of the common words. I'll keep looking."

Mika looked from one to the other, "If you do have their sensors, what can you tell us?"

Lina mmmmmeed and tapped the pad again, "Well, their sensors are really, really good, as in at least a couple orders of magnitude better than our deep space stuff. It's all built to analyze readings while transiting at relativistic speeds and figure them out in time to do something useful with them. Aaand, what they are reading right now is a small object spiraling off away from the ship in a pretty haphazard vector."

Connel blinked, "The ship?"

Lina ummed, "I think so," she said, suddenly more nervous, "But if so, they're definitely not under any kind of control. It looks like they are just burning thrust in two directions. They're going to burn through their fuel pretty quickly and be adrift soon if they don't cut engines."

Lou, whom was pacing back and forth by one of the doors to the bridge turned back to Lina, "So they're gone? Any chance we could catch them?"

Lina shook her head, "Not with what we have here, maybe I could do it if I got control of the ship engines, but if I'm looking at this, this ship isn't built to turn on a dime."

Alan glanced out one of the door, "What about landing shuttles, if this is a colony ship, or something, they'd need something to land, right?"

Lina, "Uh huh, and that's the good news. I think if I'm reading this right, there are about a dozen. I guess you'd call them shuttles in a bay at the 'bottom' of the ship, and maybe something bigger."

Lou crowed, "Well fuck this place then, let's grab one of those things and take off for either the ship or Earth."

Connel shook his head, "Think about it, if those are meant as shuttles or loaders, they probably are very short ranged, and we have how long until we get to Earth?"

Lina checked her pad, "Assuming we are using atmospheric braking, and I bet we are, about 70 days."

Mika chimed up, "That makes sense, it would give the colonists time to make closer readings, and decide if this is a colony planet, or just a place to run by and resupply, but there are probably Earth ships on the way, we weren't the only ones, right?"

"Probably not, we were just the closest," Taylor replied, "But still, we should probably figure on at least a couple of weeks until someone else shows up knocking on the door, which presents a problem."

"Yeah, I was right; we're going to starve to death." Lou grumbled, though he ceased when Mika placed a hand on his arm.

"Well, it's true we don't really have supplies for an extended stay," Mika began, "We at least have the suit supplies, and they have a few things. Water we can stretch for a few days, snacking nutrition bars that will last about the same. We'll just have to see if we can find other edibles here. So far it seems the umm, native life forms didn't have a physiology too different from our own, we might be able to eat what they ate."

Lou looked to her, "What about the allergies and stuff you said in the room with all the plants?"

She smiled wryly, which looked a bit strange on the diminutive Asian woman, "When the choices are starving, or possibly have a fatal allergic reaction, I'd rather risk the second, there are things we can do to test the possible food choices."

"I'm pretty sure that we can figure out all the systems here if we get enough time," Lina commented, and gestured to Taylor, "just give the experts our chance to shine!"

Alan grunted and looked to Connel, "If we do want to use them, we should probably check out those shuttles then."

Connel nodded, and after a moment started struggling out of his pressure suit, revealing just the standard body-hugging coverall beneath. When the others looked at him with expressions between curiosity and shock he merely shrugged,

"What? If we're going to be stuck here for who knows how long we might as well get comfortable, and that suit was starting to get nasty. Besides, I think we've figured out that if anything here breaks, blows up, or decompresses, the ship can handle it better then we can."

It took a moment, and a few shared looks, but soon enough there was a pile of pressure suits in an off to the side section of the bridge, and the crew split up again on their tasks.

*

"This is weird," Lina began as she tapped away at her pad,

"This whole situation is weird," Taylor countered, though he got up from his own console and walked across and leaned over her shoulder, "but what do you mean?"

"Well, I think I've managed to dig into the sensor logs, and sure I can't read the language, but I can tell when something leaves and comes back. It looks like this ship has been searching for a colony planet for a really long time. I mean, possibly hundreds of years, real-time, but still, at least a decade or more relative time. Each time they come to a possible planet I read the same things. Shuttles go down; shuttles come up, sometimes a few times, sometimes a bunch of times, but always multiple trips."

Taylor nodded as he tried reading over her shoulder, "Ok, so?"

She tapped the last couple of readings on her pad, while she chewed her lip thoughtfully, "So...the last time they stopped. That was it, one trip, down, up, and then nothing until the ship's automatic systems sent it out of the system. They didn't tell it to stop, so it kept right on going."

Taylor shrugged, "So? Maybe they figured out quickly that there was nothing they wanted there. Something they were allergic to or something, speaking of Mika's particular obsession."

Lina hmmed, "That could be it, but I don't know. I mean, from what I can tell, they are _really_good at processing raw material. Even if there was something they couldn't eat, or drink, or even breathe, they'd go back to resupply. They could certainly break it down into something they could use...one trip."

"Maybe it was an illness of some kind? They got sick? Something that drove them crazy, I mean, that's a lot of bodies down there."

Lina licked her lips and tapped furiously at the pad, then pointed at a couple of numbers,

"There, I've converted all their numbers from their system to ours, and it looks like the shuttle had more than the expected mass on the way back up from the planet." She blinked, "Quite a bit more, actually, at least a couple hundred kilograms, and the shuttle came back up very fast."

"Samples? Living samples?" Taylor blinked, and looked to Lina at the same time she turned, their eyes met.

"Something living, something that maybe prevented them from going back down?" Lina started,

"Something that would need to eat...and there are how many frozen dinners on this ship?" Taylor replied,

"We didn't check those bodies too closely, they could have been...umm, snacked on."

"You don't think anything would still be alive do you?"

"With enough food? We better tell the others."

*

"Lou, Mika,"

The comm crackled to life. The two walked through the thick, overgrown foliage that had taken over the whole hydroponics bay, while Mika snipped samples here and there and stuffed them into packages. Lou glanced over to her and then hit the com control,

"Yeah Taylor, what is it?"

"We...umm, we have something that might be hard for you to believe. We think the crew may have been eaten by some kind of animal, maybe something they brought back. We think it's a long shot that anything is still alive, but, just...be careful, you know?"

Lou snorted sardonically, "Sure, some big alien critter, got it. I'll keep my eyes peeled," he said as he strolled over to where Mika stood up and looked at him curiously.

"What was that?" She asked,

"Just Taylor spinning something ludicrous about some kind of beasty that killed all the crew." He shook his head, "This place has been in transit for how long?"

Mika hmmed, "Well, I suppose they could be right. Just...you know, keep that ready." She patted the drill lightly and went back and gathered samples from every plant she could reach.

*

"Keep an eye out, and be safe, ok?" Taylor's voice came over Alan and Connel's comm as they walked across the mammoth cargo bay.

Lining the walls had to be at least a dozen shuttles of identical type. They had the vaguely arrow-head-like shape of atmospheric shuttles, though in the middle of the bay what was obviously a heavy shuttle loader dominated the space. Alan and Connel looked to each other and shrugged before they looked around,

"I'd say that seems far-fetched, but then, I am standing in the middle of a giant alien ship, looking over shuttles piloted by another race that looks like they mated a snapping turtle with a gecko," Alan said sardonically.

Connel grinned, "I thought they actually looked like a hairless platypus, at least the parts that weren't all torn up." He did heft his hand torch a little closer though, and Alan unslung the mining laser from his shoulder.

"Hey, that one over there...does that look damaged?" Connel mentioned, as he gestured over to one side of the bay, where one of the shuttles rested in a port somewhat askew. Along one side of the shuttle were discolorations of the grey metal hull, darker patches that surrounded pock marks and depressions scattered around the hull.

"Yeah...those look like, burns, or maybe...melted?" Alan replied as they walked over and he ran his fingers across the damaged section, "What could have caused that?" He asked thoughtfully, before he ran his hand over to the hatch. "This doesn't seem locked," he continued, as he pulled open the large airlock. He stepped inside and stopped,

"Man, it's ripe in here all right, smells like burnt plastic and ozone, and there are more of those marks in here."

"This place gets weirder every moment," Connel said as he stepped in after, "You'd think the smell would clear out, but then, why wasn't the door sealed?" He looked around at the various burns, discolorations, and melted pock-marks on the deck. "Well, whatever did this certainly gave this place a beating, that's for sure..."

*

Mika had a good couple of armfuls of sample bags gathered and she and Lou managed to traverse the over kilometer length giant greenhouse.

"I think we have some promising samples here, and well, no stuffy nose or sneezing, so no allergic reactions so far."

Lou nodded slightly, their time in the greenhouse had tempered his foul mood somewhat, and he strode along beside her as they talked.

"Yeah, but do you think that any of it is edible?"

Mika nodded, "Many of the samples were quite fragrant, sweet tasting plants often do that when they attract local pollinators, that often means that they are good to eat as well, at least portions," she smiled, "It just wouldn't do for them to kill off their seed carriers, now would it." She blushed when she realized what she said, though Lou actually managed a guffaw in response.

"Nope...that wouldn't do at all." He wiped his hand through his hair, which actually shifted a bit in the breeze they felt circulating through the massive chamber, "I wonder how they do that," he wondered idly.

The breeze was strong enough that it ruffled the plants around them and through the massive chamber. The two of them experienced the 'weather' during their gathering trip several times. It seemed the systems kept the air circulating through the area in such strength that it actually pushed the air into a good speed breeze.

"Something else we will have to ask them, if we ever contact a live one," Mika smiled, then held up her hand, "Such as how do they get it to rain in here as well..."

"Rain, what do you..." Lou started, but then halted as the first few fat, wet droplets hit him from above.

He looked up as within moments a positive rain squall surrounded them, and the liquid soaked their suits to the skin. He held up his hand and gathered a big palmful to his lips, where he sipped cautiously and then tilted his head back to the rain.

"Its water! Water! Real Fresh clean water!" He exclaimed, while Mika demurely stepped up close to him, though she too caught handfuls of the water into her palms and drank deeply.

"Mmm, yes it is, and if they do this regularly...our water problems are over at least." She said lightly.

The two of them resumed walking, while the breeze and rain washed and roared down them.

They didn't see the rain-slickened, black figure under the brush until they were almost on top of it and it reared up to its full height in front of them. Lou cursed and stepped back, while he brought the laser drill to bear on the onyx figure in front of them. He and Mika stepped back slowly while they kept the tip of the drill facing the creature, which hissed slowly while water dripped down its jaws. Lou tapped his comm control as he continued backwards,

"Taylor...Lina, we uh, we think we found your beastie," he said, while Mika backed up a step further behind him.

Taylor's voice crackled through the comm, somewhat washed out by the sound of the wind and rain, "Say again, you've found what?"

"I said..." Lou started, his eyes locked on the banana-like head of the creature, "your beasty, the thing you think ate all the alien buggers, we found it. It's big, and black, and it looks mean." He tried sounding calm, as he kept the drill trained.

It stepped forward, out of the brush, and revealed its full form. Even hunched forward its head easily matched Lou's height, and behind it a back, spiny tail whipped back and forth behind it. It stepped forward slowly, though Lou made no move to run.

"If it's a predator, and we run, it'll go for us for sure," he said to Mika as he spared a glance back for a moment.

"Get out of there if you can, don't try and kill it...we can lock it wherever you are." That was Lina's voice, coming over crackly and weak as the comm, never intended to work under rain and wind started giving out.

"Yeah, we're doing that...we get that...wait, Mika?" Lou glanced over, where Mika had bumped his shoulder and faced behind them, her eyes wide. Lou glanced back at another large alien figure as it climbed down one of the larger, thick vines that grew. Even as large as it was, it traversed the ground with no difficulties, and it raised its head and hissed throatily,

"Ummm, Taylor...there is more than one," Lou gulped, then glanced around as rustling preceded more, at least four more of the creatures came out of the bush, "I'm going to try and scare them."

He triggered the drill, the device hummed to life as it built up a charge for a moment, before the piercing green beam of the laser flared to life and streamed from the tip. The charge was strong enough that it blasted the rain to steam immediately as it coursed through the air, directed carefully over the shoulder of the first alien they'd seen. Almost as one the creatures flinched and ducked away, while the one in front ducked back into the brush with its tail whipping behind it.

Lou grunted, "Don't like that now do...." he was cut off by a scream, which silenced in an instant.

His head whipped to the side in time to see a long, spiny, onyx tail encircle around Mika's throat and chest and a black figure dart back up into the vines while dragging her behind. He turned the laser and triggered it as quickly as he could, but he was much, much too slow. The laser discharged just after the alien disappeared into the foliage, though it immediately set a line of fire into the vines and plants.

Lou roared and turned towards the other aliens. The moved with supernatural speed as they darted forward towards him. He was faster this time though, and the near blinding laser beam touched the lead creature a good two meters in front of him. The laser sublimated its hide to smoke nearly instantly, though momentum carried it forward and it landed almost at his feet. He continued swinging the laser in its arc and caught first one, and then another in its beam. Fire and smoke mixed with the rain, and Lou turned the still firing laser onto the next creature in the path.

At least until a searing pain punched its way through his back and out his front. He looked down, dumbly, at the sight of a spiked, black tail protruding from his chest. Blood already seeped out around the spiked surface and stained the material deep red. Above him, another creature hung onto the vines, and hissed with an obscene inner mouth. A jerk and it pulled him towards it, where he could see that mouth full of nothing but teeth.

"Fuck you..." He grated between his teeth as he turned the laser upwards. The beam, still discharging, had no problems as it passed through the alien's head, chest, and Lou's own body as he turned it up into the face of the creature that killed him.

*

"Lou! Mika! Are you there? Lou, Mika!" Lina tapped again on the comms controls, and after a moment she grabbed the laser drill and started towards the door. Taylor grabbed her arm and stopped her,

"We have to get to them, maybe we can stop the attack, maybe we can save them!"

"Lou said there were more of them, if he isn't answering, they must...they must not have been scared by the laser," he finished as he lowered his eyes slightly.

"We can do something!" Lina insisted,

"Yeah, we can seal that greenhouse, we tell the guys, and we find other supplies. We do our best to be safe." He looked to her, "Now, do what you can and seal the greenhouse."

She stared dumbly at him a moment, but then nodded, "And, and I thought you were going to kill the Minotaur," she said sadly as she touched controls on her panel.

"Sometimes it's not about killing the Minotaur," he said sadly, "It's about making sure it never gets out of the labyrinth."

He then tapped his comm control,

"Alan, Connel....we umm...we probably lost Mika and Lou. There is something on this ship, some kind of predator. Lou said there were several, before...before we lost contact. Be really careful, grab any supplies you can find, and get back here as soon as you can."

He sighed and sat down, then looked at the four entrances to the bridge,

"Umm, yeah...Lina, can you do something about this?" He gestured,

"Oh...here," she said and tapped a couple of controls.

The four doors closed with barely any sound, just a low thunk of the heavy material as it slid and secured into place.

*

"Shit...shit...Lou and Mika?" Connel breathed, then hunched over and glanced around the cavernous landing bay once again.

The two of them already found what must have been a loading cart of some kind, and they piled it high with canisters of oxygen, pouches that, after cracking seemed like they contained some kind of emergency rations for the race that occupied the place before and canisters that after a bit of testing they'd discovered contained cool, clean distilled water. They managed to get through ten of the dozen or so smaller shuttles, and debated whether to do the other two or the bigger cargo lander when the message from the bridge came through.

Alan frowned and thumbed the power up on the laser, which surrounded them with the hum of the charging mining tool while he looked around the chamber as well.

"I wonder why we didn't detect 'em earlier," he muttered and squinted in the dim light. His utility light illuminated swaths of the chamber in front of them, but the sheer size of the room eventually swallowed the light up. He glanced back at Connel and nodded forward, "Get ahead of me with that stuff. I want you in front of me, and I'll get Lina to close all the bulkheads on our way back."

Connel pushed the cart in front of him, though built for an obviously bigger species it wheeled smoothly and quietly. The lack of sound made him notice how little other sound there was. No hum of engines, no sound of moving air, just their steps and their breathing, which became harsher as they hurried.

Alan hit his com control, "Taylor, Lina, we found their shuttles and some big cargo hauler. Each one had a hibernation chamber, but if the ones we found earlier are any indication, they might not be safe. We also think we grabbed a bunch of oxy, water, and some food packs of some kind. We're coming back; can you...close all the doors behind us? I don't want something creeping up on us."

"We got you," Lina's voice replied quickly through the comm, "I can track your locators through our map system and get the doors behind you. Guys, hurry back."

Her nervousness, which replaced her usual humor or bravado, was encouragement enough as the two of them hurried out of the docking bay. The door behind them closed with a dull, but heavy thunk and they made their way back towards the bridge.

They passed cross passages, other doors, and bulkheads, each of which closed in sequence behind them with the solid sound of heavy metal, while they hurried even more. It seemed like something...imperceptible drove them forward. Alan kept the drill pointed ahead of them, the power cycling as their pace increased nearly to a run, while Connel nervously looked down cross passages before they cycled closed.

They were nearly three quarters to the bridge before something caught Alan's eye and he grabbed Connel's shoulder and pulled him to a stop.

"W, what?" Connel began, but stopped when Alan put a finger to his lips and gestured forward.

Their utility lights bounced about as they moved and streamed down the dimly lit corridor. The light reflected around corners and across passageways. He pointed where the light formed a shadow with no business among the straight lines and squared off angles of the shipboard corridor. The shadow had an unnatural curve with spines that rose above it, and as they watch it shifted slightly in their wavering light.

Alan gestured to Connel and pulled him backwards, before he tapped on his com,

"Lina...I think we've spotted one of your creatures in the cross way ahead of us, can you pick it up?" He whispered, and then tapped the volume control as low as he could without turning it off.

"The sensors are really good, but there's just, no...wait, I think maybe. I could pick them up if given enough time."

"Time is something we don't really have right now," Connel whispered, eyes fixed on the shadow in front of them, which moved slightly up and down, as though it shifted with its breathing.

Alan continued, "Lina...open the door behind us, find us another route around."

"Got ya, just a second..." That came from Connel's com, much too loud; he hadn't turned the volume down on his own comm.

The shadow jerked up, straightened and stretched until it fully obscured the light as the creature rounded the corner. It hissed at them as it hunched over, elongated arms touched the ground, while a stream of clear drool seeped from its inner jaws.

"Kill my friends will you..." Alan muttered, and then triggered the drill.

The beam blinded both of them for a moment, but in that instant it crossed the space between them and the alien and burned a hole through the creature's torso and left a smoking, burning crater. It let loose an ear-piercing screech and dropped to the ground. It thrashed around as its internal organs boiled in an instant from the intense heat from the laser.

The screech acted like a trigger, as all of a sudden it seemed the corridor was full of the creatures, a dozen or more all rushed forward. Silence discarded, they all let loose screeches and cries and tooth-grating piercing tones of sound.

Alan grimly met the wave with his cutting laser. He sent the beam down the corridor and shifted whenever a new target presented itself. The creatures ran into the beam fearlessly or perhaps they were too dumb to know otherwise, but limbs, heads, bodies ended up burned, scorched, pierced, smoking as Alan used the drill on them. Connel ducked behind him and held a plasma torch in one hand, and a heavy riveter in the other, though he cringed as acrid smoke filled the air.

"Any time now." Alan said calmly into the comm, while he backed steadily towards the door.

The laser was good, and more creatures died as they charged around corners and into the hallway, but his eye dropped to the heat gauge, which steadily increased into the red.

"Got it! Go!"

Lina's voice came over the comm, and the door snapped open behind them just as the laser cut out, the 'overheat' light blinking angrily at the two miners. The wave of aliens rushed forward unimpeded and left the bodies of the smoldering fallen where they lay. Connel scrambled back behind the bulkhead, while Alan stepped back quickly and shouted into his com,

"Close it!"

The door slammed shut and nearly captured one of the creatures in its headlong rush to reach them. Instead the two of them heard the_thump_ of something as it hit the solid surface, followed shortly after by a steady pounding from the creatures as they apparently tried to pound through the solid door.

"Ok then," Alan said in an unnaturally calm voice, while Connel gasped for breath as he stared at the door. A moment later a bulge formed in the door as a particularly harsh pound landed on its surface. "Yeah, Lina, you better get us that route back as quickly as you can. I think these doors actually won't hold them long."

"I think I have a route for you,"

One of the cross-corridor doors opened silently, Alan checked the temperature gauge on the mining laser and the two of them headed through the open door.

*

Lina managed to get them the rest of the way back to the bridge without incident, though Taylor opened the door when they arrived with the laser pointing outwards. Alan snorted and pushed the drill out of the way as he stepped through the door.

"If one of those things was waiting for you outside that door, you wouldn't have time to use that...they're bloody fast." He said in a grim tone, while he casually tossed his drill to the ground next to the main console, "That one's dead without a new focusing lens, I had to overheat it and burn it out while you were working the doors," He looked to Lina as he said that, who responded.

"I...closing doors is easier then opening them. I just tell the system there's an emergency and it shuts them right down, opening them is harder." She crossed her arms and shuddered slightly.

Connel simply stared in horror at the burned out laser, "Why did you carry that all that way if it was useless?"

Alan looked back to him, "I didn't want you panicking, if you thought we had no way to defend ourselves, you might have been in trouble."

Connel started to open his mouth to say something, but then closed it quickly and lowered his eyes and looked hurt.

"So what were they, what did they look like?" Taylor asked, while he placed his arm around Lina's shoulders.

"Well, big...very big, and black, spiky all over, big nasty tails and teeth," Connel started, and then Alan picked up,

"Probably bigger than us, but it looks like they like moving on all fours. Definitely a predator, if the claws and teeth and ferocity indicated anything. They didn't hesitate at all either, once they were discovered, they just charged us." He winced, "Really, really fast too. There's a lot of them, I must have killed over a dozen, if not 20, and it didn't even faze them."

Lina nodded and turned back to her pad, "Well, when you spotted one, and told me to where it was, I think I was able to spot it with the ship's sensors. They're tricky, their body temp matches the atmosphere in the ship, so they don't show up thermally, and there are no cameras." She shook her head, "I had to go with minute pressure changes. It's rough, but it should show us any that are moving with about a half-dozen meter margin of error." She tapped a few more controls and brought up the map they'd compiled earlier.

"So...how many are there?" Taylor asked, as he looked down at the map,

Lina inhaled deeply and pressed a control. Immediately a red dot appeared, then another, a dozen, more, and more until the red dots practically filled the map.

Connel groaned and slumped into one of the chairs, while Alan simply let out a low, "Shit..."

"How have we not encountered them before, if there are so many?" Taylor asked, his eyes fixed on the sight of the moving dots, "There must be thousands..." he continued,

Lina ummed, "I think I have a reason for that, too..." Lina tapped a few more controls, "As I said, I made it into their logs earlier, so I went back to about when we boarded the ship."

As the crew watched, the dots slowly backed up; condensed and moved backwards more and more until they finally all seemingly disappeared into the back of the ship, right near engineering. Taylor's eyes opened wide as he looked to Lina and she nodded somberly,

"Yeah...I think we woke them up."

*

The four of them watched the sensors as Lina fiddled with them and tried getting a little more gain on their impromptu motion sensors. She also tried finding another way of detecting them through the internal sensors.

"How are there so many?" Connel breathed as he watched the little red dots that moved through the map.

A large number of dots occupied the corridors around the bridge; though once they arrived they winked out, which indicated the creatures stopped moving just outside the bridge doors.

"Well, they certainly had ample time and...food supply, to breed." Taylor said bleakly, as he pointed out the hibernation chamber.

"Yeah...I guess, but for them to live so long in this ship without anything else, that's crazy," Connel tried insisting, as he watched the pad.

Alan grunted, he'd picked up the other laser drill and would not let it go, instead he watched the four bridge doors. "Lots of creatures even on Earth do that. When the weather's bad, or there's no food, or if there are too many of them they'll just, go to sleep until things are more favorable," he shook his head, "That's beside the point though, what are we going to do about them?"

"What can we do? We don't have any weapons that can kill that many of them, even if we should try and wipe them out," Taylor commented, before he looked to Lina, "Can we just trap all of them? Close all the doors and open a section at a time to get where we need? Like we did to get Alan and Connel here?"

Lina tapped along her controls and shook her head, "I...I don't think I can shut them completely unless I somehow convince this computer that there was a major hull breach, and then...we wouldn't get them open again, at least not easily." She frowned, "it looks like they are using the major vents to get around the closed doors too. They won't be able to get everywhere, but they can bypass a lot of doors that way...a full lockdown would close those though." She glanced up at the room vents, "Those are too small for what you described, and at least...so they aren't going to get in that way."

Taylor nodded, "We could hole up here, but that brings back the original problem, supplies," He shook his head and looked to Lina, "and....we should warn someone about these creatures before they board. They should come loaded to the teeth, if at all. Have you found any communication systems?"

Lina nodded jerkily, "I think, maybe...but can I send out a signal?" She shrugged, "Your guess is as good as mine."

Connel held up his hand, "If we warn them, they might not come get us. Wouldn't they just blow this thing up?"

Alan shook his head, "No way...hostile nasty critter or not, this ship is something that Earth can't pass up in any way. Just this artificial gravity tech would advance our tech decades, if not centuries, and will make someone a fortune." He grimaced, "Thought it would be us, but at this point I just want to get out of here, we can talk cash another time."

Connel looked to Alan, then the other two, "What about the shuttles, or the cargo ship in the dock? We could at least use those and get out of here, couldn't we? We'd just need to get the cart we left, and it's on the way there anyway."

Lina nodded, "We could do that. You said the cargo ship looked like it was ready to launch...even if we couldn't fly it, I could open the bay and use the atmospheric pressure to launch us. It would push us away from this ship anyway, and if they're tracking this ship as closely as I expect, there's no way they should miss us."

Taylor nodded in agreement, "I think that could work...or at least, it gets us out of here. I don't really like the idea of just sitting in here with all those creatures out there, just looking for a way to get at their tasty treats." He shook his head sardonically, but managed an apologetic smile when Lina threw him a frown.

Alan nodded again, "I think that settles it then. We get to the cart with all the water and supplies, get to the big ship in the docking bay, get out of here, and take our chances. Right?"

The other three of them nodded.

A soft skittering noise caught their attention, and all four looked up in time to see a pale, crab looking thing with a long tail as it scrabbled its way through the vent. It slipped through and dropped to the floor. The four of them watched, stunned as it flipped over and scurried towards them.

"What is th..."

Connel started, but was cut off as the creature vaulted off the floor towards him. Its tail snaked out and its legs spread wide as it sailed through the air towards him. He brought his arms up in front of his face, fast enough to prevent its immediate attachment to him, but it's tail wrapped around his throat and it's talon tipped 'legs' snapped in and grabbed his head on either side. He screamed as the talons dug in and it pushed its way towards his face, while a tube of some kind writhed beneath its fleshy underside,

"Get it off, get it off!! Get it..."

He screamed, but cut off as the tail wrapped more tightly around his throat and choked him. Taylor and Alan immediately ran over and grabbed the thing by the legs and pulled hard, but it showed incredible strength and just squeezed tighter. Alan finally reached down and grabbed its tail and twisted it while he and Taylor wrenched it backwards. The thing came free, though not without tearing lines of bloody scratches from Connel's scalp as it came off, writhing and whipping in the air.

"Get it...Lina...get it when we throw it....over there."

Taylor gestured with his head to the side console. Lina nodded, wide eyed and grabbed one of the hand compression riveters.

"Ok go now!"

The two of them lofted it away as far as they could send it flying. As soon as it hit the ground Lina shot with the dull fump of discharged compressed gas. Her first shot missed, deflected off the metal and hit the console where it sent out sparks. The creature flipped over a moment later and tried to scurry away, but her second shot hit the mark right in the center of the creature's flaps. The rivet went through it and the pressure blew it away into the wall. The rivet tore through its body and sent a green smear across the floor and wall. Immediately the green bubbled and smoked, while it turned the deck and wall black and left pitting in the metal.

"What is it doing?" Taylor asked, as he looked at the smoking, growing melted holes, "Is that shit eating the metal?"

Alan walked over and poked the pitting area with a slender screwdriver he pulled from his pocket. He almost impassively watched as the tip melted away in moments.

"It's acid...some kind of acidic fluid." He watched the melting sections for a few moments longer before the apparently corrosion resistant metal finally ceased the acid's reaction, "These things use acid...as blood? That explains the damaged shuttle," he muttered.

Across the room Connel shuddered and dropped back onto his hands. The gashes on his face bled slowly and dripped down onto his coverall. Those were secondary to the dark, nasty bruise that bloomed almost immediately around his throat. He coughed, swallowed, spit and finally looked at the other three plaintively,

"Please...please, can we just get out of here now?"

*

Lina took deep breaths as she looked at the smaller pad on her pressure suit and then at the other three men as they shifted back and forth in front of the aft door out of the bridge. Alan cycled the drill on idle, while Taylor and Connel carried fully charged and loaded rivet guns and everyone also carried plasma torches in their webbing close to hand. All of them had their pressure suits dogged down, ready to seal fully just in case. Lina was the only person without a weapon to hand other than a heavy spanner, a heavy utility knife and her torch. She had to keep her hands free, as she was the one whom controlled the door sequences between them and the dock.

"I think we're ready to go...I sealed off the most direct route to the docking bay, and I don't think there were too many of the...creatures in the passages between here and there, but we should be really careful."

She gave a wan smile to Taylor, which he returned. They all looked tense, keyed up, which they were due to the distribution of amphetamines from their emergency medical packs. Not strictly standard issue, all the mining crews carried them to push for that extra hour that could mean a fortune. It did leave you a bit...twitchy, but given the circumstances, it was hardly a bad thing.

"Ready when you are," Taylor said encouragingly, and the other two men nodded.

"Ok, opening the door...now."

The door slid open, but hesitated a moment as it moved, slower than usual. The reason why quickly became obvious, the creatures apparently put down layers of resinous material and some of it gummed up the door tracks, though the door's massive power broke it free.

The opening door also caught four of the creatures apparently by surprise, though it took only a moment before they whipped around and they didn't hesitate as they charged. Alan didn't hesitate either, he triggered the cycling laser. The beam cooked and smoked all four creatures and filled the passage with acrid smoke and the screeches of the dying creatures. Lina winced and coughed at the smell and sounds in the few moments the fight lasted, before it was over.

"That...that's them?" She shuddered slightly, "They look like...big bugs or something."

Alan kicked one of the smoking bodies as he looked down to them, "That's a good term for them, since they seem tough as bugs too, this one's still twitching."

Connel looked around and touched the material the bugs had been apparently putting down busily, "This...this is the stuff we found in engineering, isn't it. I wonder how close to the umm...nest we were."

"Close enough that we were probably very, very lucky," Taylor commented before he turned back to Lina, "That worked great. If we can keep that up the rest of the way we'll be fine, I'm sure."

Alan simply muttered, "Four down, who knows how many to go."

*

Lina's system controls improved as they went. She quickly learned how to predict how many of the bugs as they started calling them holed up in each section before she opened the bulkhead door. Alan would warm up the laser, they would open the door and Alan would burn down each group before they even had a chance to react. They would then wait a few minutes to give the drill a cool down cycle before they moved into the next section. Along the way they picked up the cart with the supplies, and rolled it with them. Lina also closed every section behind them and they soon found they made it almost as far as the dock without much in the way of difficulty.

"The bugs...they're, well, it looks like they're doing something." Lina reported as the waited in a section near the docking bay while the laser cycled down and cooled.

"What do you mean?"

Taylor asked before he looked over her shoulder at her pad. She pointed out a couple of points on the map, and then zoomed in on the cargo bay, where many dots shifted and moved in the open space.

"Well, I sealed the bay completely, air vents and all...but the bugs there are moving together in groups, and a lot of them were moving right in front of the door to this passage."

She then pointed to the section behind her, "And see here? They're obviously getting through the vents, but they're not dropping down in front of us, they're dropping behind us, even right behind us," she said with a glance at the door behind them.

"But they're not trying to break through..." Alan finished as he looked back, "They should be strong enough, they definitely put some dents and damage in the sealed doors when they chased us."

"We don't know how intelligent they are," Connel interjected, "They could have some way of communicating, like our comms."

"Did you see anything resembling tools on those things?" Alan asked, as he poked a still smoldering corpse, "They're bugs..."

"Yes...but ants, and things like that on earth, they communicate, right?" Connel replied, "Maybe by scent or something."

Alan shrugged, "Well, whatever they're doing, they're not stopping us from getting out of here." He grunted and set himself up in front of the door to the next section.

*

"They're stopping us from getting out of here."

Taylor said, as Lina tapped a couple of controls on her pad. In front of them, the huge, heavy doors to the docking/cargo bay stood in front of them, and as Lina touched a few commands, the deck vibrated as the doors strained as they tried to open. After twenty seconds or so, the vibrations stopped, and the door motors ceased moving as they gave up the attempt to open, and the safety systems prevented the motor from burning out.

Alan glared at Taylor and walked over to the doors. He pushed on them, and then tried wedging a thin knife into the seam between the doors. He grunted as he tried putting extra force in it, but even with his help, Lina's controls did nothing but cause another cycle of whining before the motors cut out.

"Something is jamming it, all right..."

"Maybe it's that green stuff?" Connel volunteered, "I mean, they were putting it on the bridge doors, they just didn't get enough of a coating before we opened it. They've had a lot more time here."

Lina nodded, "More time...and that would explain why so many of them moved to this side of the bay. I bet they were all working to get the doors coated."

Taylor looked to Lina, "Could we go around? Another way in maybe?"

She shook her head, "I mean, we could, there is another door on the other side, but we'd have to do the section by section thing again, and who says they won't be able to do the same thing to the other door before we got there."

Alan looked at the drill and then shook his head, "We don't have the charge to go all the way around, either. The drill would be out of power before we made the other door...and I don't really like the idea of fighting these things without something a bit more powerful than those," he gestured to the riveters with his chin.

"Ok then? What do we do? We need a plan..." Lina started, but then stopped when Alan stepped forward and set the drill at the base of the door.

"We could backtrack," Connel suggested,

"Not a good idea," Lina answered, "There must be...well, a lot behind us, and backtrack to where?"

"I'm done with planning."

He started, and then triggered the drill. The flare of light tripped the polarization protection in all of their helmets immediately, but they could see as the laser swiftly made gains as it cut through the metal.

"We have torches you know, you should save that..." Taylor started, though Alan shook his head,

"Too slow, and too short a cutting length, these are ship-bulkheads, plus whatever gunk those _bugs_covered it with. This is the only thing that's going to get through quickly." Alan glanced back, "Get ready to run." He said simply.

Taylor nodded grimly, while Lina opened, and then closed her mouth and finally nodded. Connel looked vaguely sick as the cutting beam moved inexorably up the seam between the two giant doors. "You better be able to get us into the cargo ship fast," Alan continued, as the beam neared the top.

"I can get us in." Lina replied, while she reached out and gripped the supply cart harder.

Alan turned off the laser as it reached the top of the seal, and then looked back to Lina, before giving a final nod.

She nodded in return, and tapped a control on her arm. The great doors vibrated, groaned, shifted, and then finally moved. They split wide down the cut seam and shuddered open with the screech of dragging metal. The four of them could see the resinous coating across the inner walls as the doors opened; the material crumbled and twisted as it resisted, then finally gave way to the doors' progress. They made it open just wide enough for two people, less than a quarter their size before the doors ground to a halt.

"Ok, that's it, go go go!"

Taylor yelled and ran past Alan through the gap. After a moment's hesitation Lina followed, pushing the cart, while Connel ran behind. Alan followed last, not quite running due to the weight of the drill, he moved at a trot.

The chamber behind had completely changed from their previous explorations. The dim light, illuminated only by their bobbing, sweeping lights now had a coating of the dark resin secreted by the bugs coating the walls and up into the ceiling of the huge chamber. They'd formed stalactites of the resin, and most of the shuttles vanished into the sticky, slimy material. Even the cargo vessel was undergoing a coating with the material, though they'd not managed to cover it completely.

As soon as the four crewmembers came barreling through the door, the creatures swarmed out from nooks, crannies and bolt holes that only existed due to the heavy coating of their secreted material.

"I've got to let the laser cool!" Alan shouted as he jogged behind, while he still held the laser pointed forward, though he did not trigger the beam.

Taylor nodded inside his suit, and Connel raised the rivet gun. Between the two of them, the dull _fump_of the high pressure air sounded a bit like the venting of steam engines, but with a much different effect. The rivets flew through the air with the impact of bullets, though the creatures were so fast that most of them went wide. One of the rivets caught one in the side of the chest and ricoched off without penetrating its thick hide. The impact did send spinning to the side, and with a screech it twisted away and darted over one of the shuttles.

More shrieks filled the air as the creatures charged, and the rivets flew through the air to meet them, but with little effect on their hardened bodies.

"I think we're just pissing them off!"

Taylor shouted with another thump of discharged compressed air. This time he caught the closest one in the joint of its neck, and it fell back with the thick green liquid spewing from its throat. The stuff splashed off the floor and immediately started melting through the deck below.

"Don't step in that," Alan shouted, "And aim for the joints, knees and head! Let them get closer if you have to."

The group slowed as they tried to get some kind of accuracy from their improvised weapons, still a good thirty meters from the door of the cargo carrier. The rivets bounced, reflected, and rarely did damage to their targets, but it slowed the bugs' advance. They kept coming, inexorably though, 20 meters, away...10 meters. The closest one reached out long arms, talons extended, and Taylor heard the hissing from its mouth as it lunged for him.

"Down!"

He didn't even think; he just dropped to the sticky coated floor, while a flash of green swept out above him. The screeches increased five-fold, and he glanced up as he saw the mining laser as Alan swept across the advancing horde. It splattered them as it touched them and burned through their hides, the boiling fluid caused immediate overpressure that burst outwards even as it burned to smoke from the intense heat. The entire first wave of bugs went down as Alan triggered the beam and swept it from one side to the other.

"Now, get to the ship, now!"

The command voice had the three of them up in a minute, and they rushed to the side of the ship. They practically slammed against the side as they reached it, and Lina fumbled with a lead on her pad, and fitted it into the side of the door controls.

"How long?" Connel asked, while Lina tapped furiously,

"Just a little bit, a few seconds, maybe longer."

"Better make it shorter," Taylor yelled, "Here they come again."

The bugs rushed them again, this time not straight from in front of them. They bounded from structure to structure in a way that belied their huge forms. They darted forward and looped around the structures, both original, and the ones they'd created, as they obviously tried avoiding direct paths from them to the deadly laser.

Taylor and Connel continued firing with their riveters as best they could. They caught the bugs as they darted forward, or slipped between pieces of cover. The rivets still had little effect, other than to knock them down and make them hesitate a bit more before they advanced. Taylor cursed and pivoted up as one scrabbled above them. He fired from the hip, and the rivet went ripping through the thing's mouth as it poised to strike and tore through the inner structures, where the hard hide kept the rivet inside as it destroyed the creature's brain. It fell to the side of the ship and twitched, ignored by Lina as she tapped furiously at her pad.

Alan let loose another green flare of laser light which burned down another of the creatures as it got within striking distance, though the battery-low alarm promptly started beeping, and the red-light of the overheat warning flashed from the top of the control.

The smoke of the venting overpressure air, and the smoking corpses formed a haze that limited the dim light even further, while the three men worked grimly as they kept the slowly closing circle of bugs from collapsing in on them completely.

"There, got it...done!"

The door hesitated a moment longer, then slid open with the hiss of different pressure air and Lina pushed the cart quickly through the opening. Connel and Taylor ducked through quickly after...though Alan backed through; and triggered the laser again and again as more of the creatures tried to reach them with talon tipped hand or opened jaw.

Three things then happened at once...the steady beeping of the overheat warning turned a solid tone, the laser cut out suddenly, the flares of light gone and leaving just an afterimage behind, then one of the creatures took the advantage and plunged through the door. Perhaps it waited above for the chance but it tackled Alan and bore him to the ground under all its weight. Thirdly, the door slid shut and almost caught the creature's tail as it came through while heavy slams followed as more of the creatures hit the side of the hull.

"Shit...shit...shit!"

Connel cursed as the creature landed with all its weight on top of Alan and the two thrashed together, as each tried to get a hold of the other. Alan pushed away with all his strength, while the creature bore down with all of its. Connel lunged forward, Taylor a moment later as they tried to grab it and pull it off.

A sweep of one arm sent Connel the side with deep rents ripped into the front of his suit, and a whipping strike of its tail sent Taylor sprawling the other. Its attention diverted though, Alan grabbed the plasma torch from his belt while his arm was freed. As it bent back down, he could see the inner jaws and a trail of saliva drizzled from it and onto his faceplate. His eyes burned in return, and he triggered the torch,

"Hope this meal is just a little too hot for you...fucker." He grated out as he swept the plasma torch upwards.

The superheated gas, thousands of degrees in temperature burned through the creature's steel-like hide in seconds, but the short cutting length wasn't enough to burn away the acid inside. The creature'ss inner organs spilled out through the smoking hole as Alan split it from crotch to chest, but they all poured out onto Alan's pressure suit.

The suit's material was strong, built to withstand a limited vacuum, and work in some of the most toxic atmospheres imaginable, but it wasn't strong enough to stand up to the creature's acidic blood. It melted swiftly through the suit and then spilled into the insides of the suit itself, where it also melted through flesh, blood, bone and skin.

The other three of them could only watch horrified as the two tangled together in a parody of some grotesque lover's embrace, while Alan screamed in pain, a scream which turned into a wet, liquid gurgle, and then...nothing but silence, while acrid smoke rose from their bodies.

A moment later the silence was interrupted by the sounds of heavy, strong blows against the airlock door. Thumping blows rained against the outer airlock door that even as they watched punched two dents into the heavy metal. Taylor gulped and looked over to Lina,

"Lina...sweetie...I think we need to get going...right the fuck now."

She nodded dumbly and stumbled fore. The airlock put them right behind the bridge, and though she had to climb a short ladder they made it up quickly enough. Taylor stood below and held the rivet gun grimly as he watched more dents form in the airlock door while he stood inside the inner door.

"Ok...get ready...this is going to be fast and hard, I convinced the computer that there's a catastrophe, and I'm blowing the launch doors now!"

A sudden, massive jolt went through the entire ship as computer systems, convinced of the need for an emergency launch, triggered huge explosive bolts that blew the docking doors directly away from the ship without depressurizing the docking bay first. The concussion, the air pressure, and the still functioning artificial gravity sent the huge cargo ship plummeting away from the ship's hold, while the rushing air built its momentum as it flew away from the ship.

The bugs caught around the ship had no warning and no chance at all as they flew out into the vacuum of space immediately, flung away by lesser mass, momentum, and the force of the air as it blew past them. All around them, the black forms spiraled away into space, individually or in groups. As the cold and vacuum affected their bodies, they curled up as tightly as they could into little balls, minimizing their surface area and compressing themselves against the rigors of space.

Taylor watched the doors as there were one or two more thumps, and then the impacts grew silent as they flew away from the ship. He watched them for minutes, while Connel watched him, and Lina tapped at her pad and connected interface leads into the cargo ship's local computer.

Only when the thumps completely stopped Taylor collapsed to the floor. His collapse acted as kind of a sign, and Connel dropped as well with a groan, both of them noticeably lighter, but still under some kind of artificial gravity.

Taylor looked up to where Lina continued tapping away furiously, "Lina, how are we?"

Lina glanced back, "We're clear, I think...we're away from the ship at least, and our trajectory is diverging slowly." She slumped a bit, "I still have communication with my main console, and will for a while, at least. The cargo bay reads hard vacuum, but it looks like those...things are getting even more active inside the ship."

Taylor levered himself up and climbed up where Lina perched in the pilot's chair and looked over her shoulder, "Do you have communications yet?"

She nodded hesitantly, "Nothing that I can use to send any of our formats of compatible data, but I can at least set up a beacon...I'm pretty sure."

He reached forward and tapped out a few commands on her pad and showed a series of dots and dashes.

"What's that?"

"You forget your history? It's a language...they called it Morse code. Get the carrier sending that signal in cycle. Send the first from the ship, the second from here."

She nodded, "I can do that, though the comms on this ship are short range, it seems. They are just strong enough to get orbit and back. What are you telling me to send?"

"Doesn't matter about our range, I'm sure they'll pick it up eventually anyway, they can't have missed our separation from the main ship. The first is a quarantine warning, contamination; hopefully they'll listen to it and stay away. The second, that's an SOS, hopefully they'll get it quickly enough to pick it up in time so they can come get us."

Lina nodded, and then in a sudden gesture, opened her helmet and leaned up and kissed Taylor hard,

"We're safe now...right?"

"Looks like this time, the sacrifices found their way out of the labyrinth." Taylor winked at her, before he turned and rejoined Connel, who stared at the two bodies, still intertwined, though little remained of Alan that could be recognized as 'human' any longer.

"He saved us." Connel started, when Taylor put his hand on the other man's shoulder.

"He did...and we'll get his remains back home, so that everyone else remembers it."

The two of them looked down,

"Now, we need to make sure we get home, so everyone remember us."

*

The three of them gathered beneath the ladder to the cockpit, where they looked at the pile of canisters, bags and other supplies they gathered while searching the cargo ship.

"So, what do we have?" Taylor asked, as he looked to Connel.

"Well, if we ration things out really carefully, we probably have water for about three weeks," He grimaced and gestured to the bags to the side, "I did what testing I could on their rations, but I'm not Mika. I don't think any of it is toxic to us, but I also don't know how good it is for us, nutrition wise. If it's ok, call it seventeen or eighteen days of food, counting what we have in our suits...and Alan's."

He glanced over to the airlock. The first thing the trio did was use the airlock systems to flush the remains of the alien creature out into space, but since they had no other storage for Alan's remains, they'd agreed to put him there as well.

Taylor looked to Lina, "So two weeks, three and we'll end up hungry when they get here. If we keep going a couple days after that maybe, we start dying of dehydration. Where does that put us in relation to any kind of rescue?"

Lina bit her lower lip and took a glance up at the bridge. They'd found controls for an opening shield, so they now had a large viewing window looking out to space. The other ship was still in sight as a receding shape at the top of the view, though it rapidly shrunk from view.

"Well, we're separating from the ship at a dozen or so meters a second. At that rate we'll be out of link range in a few more minutes." She shrugged, "Last I could tell, the next ship on its way still was at least a month and a half out, we thought two months, but they must be burning some serious energy to get out there fast. We don't know if they'll come after this ship immediately though, that could take a course correction." She then looked out the front, "The bigger danger is that we are going to graze the asteroid belt...if we hit something big enough, well we won't even have the chance to wonder what it was."

"There's...something else, I think you should see it," Connel gestured with a jerk of his head towards the back of the large cargo vessel.

*

"Huh, looks like we might get our first contact after all,"

Taylor commented, as the three of them stood before a bank of ten tubes. Like the ones they found on the big ship, the tubes stood straight up against the side of the hull, though these were against the bulkhead furthest aft of the ship, before any engines. Nine of them stood empty, the tenth contained a single occupant, one of the species they'd seen on the main ship, and this one looked intact. Taylor looked over to Lina, where she had her pad plugged in with her interface cables and tapped away,

"So is it, alive then?"

Lina nodded excitedly,

"I think so, yes...these things are like our hibernation tubes," she looked up, with something akin to the wonder she had when she saw the ship the first time, "If I'm reading this right, there are still life signs."

Connel smiled a bit sheepishly, "When I saw this, I thought maybe we could wake it up, make it fly us back to Earth."

Taylor shook his head, "Nice thought, but we don't know if it's hostile, or if we have any chance at communicating with it. I think, we might want to just leave it here for now," he patted the tube, but then looked to Lina, "Any chance we can use these though?"

Lina looked up from her pad and blinked, "I haven't the foggiest...you're asking me if this tube can be adapted for our physiology, and will understand our life signs well enough that it won't just kill us."

Taylor grinned and nodded, "Pretty much, yeah...this looks like it doubles as an emergency escape pod, and the food and water we have will stretch a lot longer if, say...only one of us is awake to consume it."

Connel and Lina looked at each other and then looked back to Taylor, "One of us awake?" Lina started hesitantly.

"Yeah, I think we could do...say, one week shifts. Lina, if you can give us a tutorial on the interface on the ship, we can take turns monitoring for incoming ships, and maybe even get through that asteroid belt. If we get nine or ten weeks of water, and as much food, it sounds a lot better then what we have."

Lina considered a moment, and then typed a few commands on the pad, a determined look on her face, "It might take me a couple days before I really get a grasp on this system, it seems they are powered and run completely separately from the ship's computer, so I'm going to have to get a handle on it."

Taylor smiled encouragingly, and then patted Connel on the shoulder, "Come on now, we should let the genius work." He grinned, "And we should get this place ship-shape, since it seems like we might have to take turns making this our home for now."

*

Two days later, Lina confidently declared that she understood the workings of the hibernation pods. The three of them gathered in front of them, Connel and Lina stripped out of their pressure suits, so they wore nothing but their body-tight jumpsuits, in front of two open pods, right next to their alien passenger.

Taylor stood in front of them, while Lina pointed to her pad, and a few leads coming out of it.

"If the ship's sensors pick up anything bigger then about a meter around, you'll get a warning there. I have the chambers set up so they should auto cycle after a week...but to reset them you'll need to hit here, and here...also, make sure you charge it with the leads, and if you need to steer, hit here and here and I'll wake up. You have to give me a couple hours though, it seems like it takes that long for these things to wake up their occupant."

Taylor nodded and smiled indulgently, "I know...you went over all of this with us earlier...we'll be fine."

"I know...but...I'm about to step into one of those pods, and I just...I want to make sure I see you again."

Connel was already in his pod and leaned back into the amazingly comfortable holding pod. He gave the thumbs up to Taylor and grinned,

"Hey, I figure this will be the best sleep I'll get in months, don't worry man, I'll be ready to go and relieve you in a week."

Taylor grinned in reply as he reached up and pulled down the capsule lid,

"Just don't sleep through the alarm man; you always did have a bad habit of waking up late for your shift."

The capsule lid closed with a heavy click, followed by a brief hisss as it sealed airtight. As Lina and Taylor watched Connel's eyes fluttered closed as a light mist drifted down from the top of the pod, and after a few minutes all visible movement ceased.

Lina tapped a couple of commands on her pad and nodded, then let lose a low sigh, "Everything looks good, I was pretty sure, but until someone actually went under I couldn't tell."

Taylor gently took her shoulders and leaned in and kissed her firmly, "I know it would be fine, you're amazing at this." He smiled, "It's why you're third shift; we want you up there when we have our close encounter with the asteroid belt."

Taylor helped Lina into the second pod, and settled her back into the cushioned surface while her fingertips dragged across Taylor's arm.

"I think after this, I'll be done with space for a while, maybe forever," Lina sighed as she settled back, while Taylor chuckled.

"Well, we still have this ship, I'm sure that with this we'll be able to afford to go wherever we want, and you can find work with any number of takers."

Lina smiled wanly, "You said we," she said with an uncharacteristically shy smile.

Taylor nodded as he reached up and caught the pod's lid, "Yes, we...now you have a good thought to take with you, and give you sweet dreams," as he lowered the lid he gave her one more wink, "see you when we're saved, and we're on our way home.

When the pod lid closed, Lina looked out at Taylor's watching face. His eyes met hers and held them as the mist descended over her and she felt her lids grow heavier. She blinked, blinked again, and the last thing she saw before her eyes closed was Taylor looking in on her, keeping her safe on their way home.