Oh crap, it’s fanfiction.

So, some friends of mine have sucked me into EVE Online. A mind forever voyaging. They sent a poet. So on and so forth. In any case, in my eternal search for internet fame and virtual fortune, I’ve decided to spend my literary prowess on a ripe batch of fanfiction, enter it into a competition, and hopefully win myself some isk to spend on bright, shiny spaceships that I can’t actually use yet, because I’ve been playing for a month and change. In my usual way of things, I overdid it horribly and wound up with 6,500 words. There’s something actually wrong with me.

And since I actually have to put this: This is my entry to the Inspired By Images Of Eve Competition 2. More details and links to all entrants can be found at Starfleet Comms

In any case, here it is. I call it…

A Sliver in the Night

She was just beginning to unclamp her fingers from the console when the thrusters exploded.

Suddenly the air was awhirl: loose papers and flailing limbs, discarded pens and soft drinks. She fell to her knees, hard, and felt the bruise form quickly, the pain almost as real as the screaming that echoed around her. She saw the lighting flash red, the particular pitch of repetitive screaming alarm telling her: critical systems failure. She was on the comms as soon as she could get her body under control, her fingernails pressing so hard into the wristband communicator that she felt a nail break off inside. “Captain! What’s happened!” Her voice was a scream among screams, her ears pricked and ready. A hissing silence replied.

She felt the ship slow, her body growing less stressed as the ship’s velocity decreased. In time, she began to feel actually comfortable, which would only mean that the ship had stopped dead. There was a crackle over the comms, a mumbling of letters that was the Taranis’ battered systems trying to approximate their captain’s voice. Only when he began to speak did she realize that he was broadcasting over the entire ship, not simply in reply.

“Well,” he began. “That must have been a hell of a sight. The Sliver, quicker than light, driving through space like a nail through a sandwich, sun at her back and a belly full of knowledge… up until the point her entire back end blew up and killed our warp engines. If this mission hasn’t been enough to give you grey hairs yet, then just listen to this: we’re dead out here. Disabled.”

Gail felt the fear spring up out of her core, unwanted, and she was trying hard to choke it down when the captain continued his report. “And do you want to know something really interesting? There’s not a whisper on the overview. We’re the only ship in sight. So, guess where the explosion had to come from?”

The fear spilled from her mouth, a sad little cry. Her eyes looked up, wide and working, trying to determine which of her own research team feared death, which feared for their mission… and which feared for discovery, because the inferred betrayal was now the only thing that made sense to her, the only possible outcome of this entire terrifying trip. Idiot. Short-sighted terrestrial. Space was filled with intrigue and danger and murder; did she really think the drones were the only thing capable of sabotaging their task?

The speakers continued to rumble. “Crew heads, on the bridge. Everyone else, in your rooms. Anyone who isn’t safely locked where they’re supposed to be in five minutes is getting electrocuted. This is serious. Take it seriously.” Gail pulled herself to her feet, wobbly but compliant. Her assistants were already beginning to scamper out in ones and twos, desperate to avoid suspicion. She heard one last message before she, too, began to run: “I really hate traitors.”

The bridge was more of a meeting room than a control chamber. The big, central captain’s console had been torn up; only a ragged hole, fringed with capped wires, remained to mark its place. The smaller consoles, where a crew would sit and steer the pewter-grey Taranis through the universe, weren’t just dead but bolted over. This was a capsuleer ship; there was no place for a conflict of command. Comfortable, wheeled seats were brought in and braked in a rough semicircle, close enough that each person could see each other’s face but everyone was afforded a similar view of the one live screen that remained in the room: the wall-spanning view console, which would, for a more heavily manned ship, display a general overview of nearby space. Now it showed a figure, shoulders up, with slick red hair and bright green eyes that showed none of the exhaustion and anger that dripped through its electronic voice: this was the captain, the capsuleer, or at least a rendered likeness thereof that added a more human face to the semiconscious body suspended at the heart of the ship.

The doors closed behind them, and Gail heard the clamp of the lock. They were trapped in here. She tried not to think about it, and found an empty seat, sandwiched between a black-haired young girl with a glowing lens drilled over one eye and an enormously sturdy man in a Gallentean military uniform. She was the last to take her place, gathering her white lab coat underneath her before she sat, and the great face on the screen nodded as she did and began to speak.

“You’re probably aware of our situation by now. Let me sum up, if only to get it straight. There are fifty-three crewmembers on this ship, a Taranis privately owned by myself. One of you has blown up my engines, and now we’re all stuck in deadspace. I would be inclined to believe it was a mechanical malfunction, even though I did not sense anything out of sorts and I don’t fly broken ships in the first place, if it wasn’t for what we were carrying. What we were fitted with, I should say. I volunteered myself and my enormously expensive and beautiful Sliver for this mission because of the incredible benefit it could have for us all – not just Duvolle Labs, not just the Gallente Federation, but Eve, the universe. Others can explain it better than I can. So, with that, introductions. Start on the left, please: name, rank, and personnel amount.”

Gail felt the woman shift to her left, and looked to see her stand. “Imari Heruar, chief of internal communications. I have no personnel.” She spoke with a peculiar accent; it took Gail a second or two to recognize her as a tribeswoman, and then it was her own turn to stand.

“Gail Caedo, chief of research. I have twenty assistants, all contracted to Duvolle Labs, as am I.” She looked out over the concave assembly of faces, watching them assess her, suspect her. She knew they would; she had the largest amount of direct underlings, and none of them were beholden to the government. She felt their gaze slide over her, a collective slick of sensory apprehension, until the broad body beside her stood and motioned her back into her place.

“Reynhard Ordi, chief of security. I command twelve fine Federation soldiers.” The man’s fine lips pursed underneath his mustache drawing into a thin, discontented line. “I can assure you that all of my men are thoroughly loyal, and I personally approved all small arms brought on board.” He sat as stiffly and suddenly as he stood, apparently content simply to state his piece.

The next to stand was a smaller, older man, his thin balding head barely covered by a stubble of mottled white and brown. “I’m Conn Harraday, and I’m chief of engineering. I have five men and they should all be out there fixing the damn engines, not locked in their rooms like criminals.” Gail could see his jowls shake when he talked; the face on the screen frowned at his speech but did not respond, just waving him down with a virtual hand. He took his seat reluctantly, still easing his body into the comfortable grey plastic as the man next to him stood.

“Tion Lux, operations. Ten men.” He spoke quickly and sat quickly, a thin young man with a thin young voice, and it was difficult to tell whether his abrupt demeanor was due to nervousness, reticence or guilt. He looked too small, too preoccupied to be a saboteur… but that might be exactly what they aimed for, Gail thought, having never met a saboteur in person before.

The last to stand was an older woman, soft and blonde, with thin yellow-white hair and a cheeselike face that appeared far too used to its heavy coat of makeup. Flakes drifted from her forehead as she spoke, revealing the fine little lines written into the pale skin, but she spoke with a poise uncharacteristic of her haggard appearance. “My name is Candice Callah, and you’ve all probably met me before. I’m chief quartermaster, and I have only one assistant.” A smile drew itself on her face, all bleeding lipstick and helpless friendliness. “I’ve very likely met each of you before. I hope to be able to work with you again once this-”

“Stow it,” interrupted the captain, and Candice Callah sat again in silence. Impatience was written all over his false face. “We really don’t have time for this, but in this sort of situation, we have to keep everything in the open. You all know each other. You all know your people. Not everyone knows exactly why we’re out here, though, apart from the vague description of a research expedition sent to gather data on drone signals. I think it’s time our true purpose was explained. Gail, if you will?”

She felt all eyes shift to her again, and buoyed by their presence, she stood. Gail was never good at speaking in front of people; it’s why she went into research, rather than lecturing, though she loved the university halls with all her blood and brain and chafed at every day spent elsewhere. But here, here people required her expertise, if only to lend some illumination to the terrible risk they had all undertaken, and the incredible benefits if it all worked out.

“I’m sure you’re aware that the Sliver has recently come exceedingly close to a hive of rogue drones. Through the actions of this crew and a few independantly contracted capsuleers, we’ve managed to avoid attack while gathering critical research data on Duvolle Laboratories’ newest and most promising creation: the signal spike.” She took a breath. Schematics poured through her mind, the hundred thousand signal sequences she had personally constructed and contributed to the project, the years spent ruining her eyesight staring at a computer screen. She could talk for hours about drone bandwidth, command AI, crystal core beacon relays… but they did not have hours. She did not know how long they had.

“Rogue drones operate under a sophisticated artificial intelligence that causes them to set up independant, hostile colonies and expand, consuming all raw material in their path. What is not so commonly known is that this intelligence is not uniform among all rogue drones, and each is tied to a mother or queen intelligence that directs and maintains the growth of the hive. The pattern is similar to ants, or bees: there are gatherers, and soldiers, and scouts, and a scant few mother drones that split off to form new colonies. The signal from that mother drone is based in a single location, but is transmitted through each individual drone, maintaining a collective colony. It is not enough to simply disrupt this transmission; this causes the drones to simply go berzerk and attack anything nearby, which is not so different from the typical experience with these creatures. To truly halt this transmission, it must be mimicked, and for this, Duvolle Labs has developed the signal spike.”

“When fired into a drone colony, the spike immediately cycles through millions of transmission sequences until it discovers one close enough to the native transmission as to overwrite it. Our current prototype is designed to transmit a single, simple command: shut down. This is its first field test, and it has functioned exactly as intended. This ship has shut down a hive of hundreds with a single shot.”

The face on the screen interrupted her, speaking with rapid authority. “And now you know why we’ve been disabled. The potential for this kind of technology would almost be unimaginable, except I can imagine quite easily what other sort of commands could be loaded into the thing. So could others. Which is why the project has been kept very, very secret, even from members of my own crew, and why it can’t be kept secret anymore. You see, I’ve detected another oddity inside my ship: a deep-space transmission. Nothing complicated, or even very powerful. Just a repeating series of beeps, really, not even distinguishable from the background noise of space… unless you knew what you were looking for. Then you could use it like a beacon. And I don’t know where it’s coming from.”

“So, that’s our situation. We’re sitting in deadspace, disabled, carrying one of the most important scientific advances of modern times. One of us, possibly several of us, is in the employ of persons unknown, and is transmitting our location to this shadow organization. The cavalry is coming, and I can’t trust a one of you.”

It was the quiet operations officer, Tion, who said what they were all thinking: “What do we do now?”

The false face simply smiled.

***
Gail stood in front of her team of twenty, trying to appear wise and full of authority. It wasn’t doing much good. Much of her team was like her: green and unused to space, sedentary intellects who had spent eons of thought on the difficulties inherent in the environment without having once stepped into it. They shared a set of rooms, two scientists to each closed space, and gathered now in the common area that had become their own private geek-nest, scattered with trade magazines, entertainment software and pornography. The doors had been unlocked only two minutes ago, just before Gail had stepped through to address them.

One young girl, so terribly young, stepped up and looked at her with obvious worry. “What went on in there, chief? Are we going home?” She didn’t want to tell her no, but had to, and watched the fear spread like a disease through her people. It wasn’t going to get any better. “Please, sit down for a minute, all of you. I have some news, and some instructions.” She ran over the information in her head, what she was supposed to tell them and what she was absolutely forbidden to. “In about five minutes, the military is going to come in and search your rooms.” At that: gasps, incredulity, some swearing, but she had expected all of this. “Don’t worry, you’ll get to search theirs back.” She explained, as quickly and calmly as she could, that someone was responsible for the destruction of their engines, that someone had stranded them here on purpose.

Then it came time to lie. The necessity of it had been explained to her, but she was not comfortable with the deception, and she hoped it didn’t show. “The engines were overloaded by a remote feedback loop, and the machinery is definitely still around. Look for anything that makes a sound like this.” She tapped her fingers on the doorframe, a quick repeating pattern: three taps, a pause, then four. “It’s important not to touch it when you find it, but alert me or the captain as soon as possible. You’ll also be working in teams, because… well, because that’s what we have to do, in this situation.”

She let them talk, wonder and whisper and cry, and wished she could join them, but there was always a separation, when you were the boss. No one trusted you as deeply as they did their other comrades, and there were things they did not tell you, but you had to find out for yourself. Like how the two young people talking quietly beside the thick, clear viewport held each other for more than just mutual reassurance. Like how the pale old man kept an Amarr holy book hidden among his clothes, and moved his lips in noiseless prayer when he was afraid. Like how his mate, a cat-eyed woman with hair like a stormcloud, spoke cordially to Gail and viciously behind her back, openly coveting her position. She wondered: which one of these secrets was enough to betray them all?

In time, too little time, the door slid open and a dozen uniformed men filed into their quarters. The research team filed out beside them, pairing off easily, as if they were working on any other project together. Gail noted with distinct ease that none of the soldiers wore weapons, and each jacket and holster hung conspicuously open, as if to remind the world of that. She followed after her team, giving gentle instructions, when she felt a hand on her shoulder that was larger than her head, and looked up into the blocky, mustached face of Reynhard Ordi.

“Hold back a minute,” he told her, “we should talk.”

They leaned in the hallway outside the closed door, listening to the shuffle of activity behind them as his men tore apart her peoples’ quarters and searched through all their private things. He leaned down, shuffling his big body to an angle, so that she could look him in the eye, and took out a small silver case from a breast pocket. He opened it, and inside were ten brown hand-wrapped cigarillos, which he held to her in offering. She began to shake her head, but he insisted. “Chief Researcher Caedo,” he said, using her title, “are you sure that you’re going to return from this alive?” She was silent, and he pressed one of the pungent sticks into her fingers. “I don’t like these sneak-in-the-dark rat games. Nothing’s certain. So let’s take our pleasure, yes? What’s cancer, compared to a pirate missile volley in the ear?”

He lit her cigarillo, and she remembered enough not to inhale. “Good, good,” he said, exhaling the smoke over his mustache, scenting the air. They let the silence hang for a moment, not sure what to say to one another. He broke it suddenly, a bright bass rumble. “Who do you make for the spy?” he asked, and his bushy brows shot up in honest curiosity.

“I… don’t know if I can make that decision,” she said, “I don’t have enough information.” Reynhard nodded. “A good response. A scientist’s response. I’m more used to making decisions with this.” He patted his prodigious gut, a solid mass of fat-lined muscle. “Intuition first, examination after. And right now my intuition’s pointing at that Heruar woman, the communications officer.” She arched a curious eyebrow, but he needed no goad to continue. “Captain seems to think it could be anyone, but it seemed obvious to me, right from the start. Why would a spy hide in the rank and file? Everyone else on board is tied to the Federation, by loyalty or employ. Every other person on this ship has a personal interest in seeing it home safe. Now, I’m not saying the Minmatar are fickle, or treacherous, but here? She doesn’t belong. She has no underlings, no one to answer to. Her quarters aren’t being searched. And that makes me curious.”

Once again, his vast hand found its way to her shoulder. She held the weight of it, smelled the smoke in his fingernails. “You’re a scientist. You’re good with curiosity. I’m not saying you should persecute the woman, but… be curious, yes? That’s what you’re here for.”

And at that he turned and went inside the research quarters, helping his men uncover their secrets.
***

She spoke before she even turned around, eyes and fingers busy with the console that was the sole bright point of light in the cramped and cable-strewn communications cabinet. “You’re here because you suspect me of treason,” she said.

Gail stood in the doorway, the light leaking in. She almost asked how the woman knew, but then she remembered: the wrist communicator wrapped around her own arm, as well as that of every person on the ship. She had never heard of them being able to be operated remotely, but it was not beyond the realm of imagination. “Reynhard does,” she said, “I just want to talk to you.”

She saw Imari’s smile reflected in the screen. “People usually talk through me, not to me. This is going to be interesting.” She swiveled her chair around, angling her shaved head so that her one good eye pointed at Gail. “Tell me, then, why do you want to… talk to me?”

She paused. Gail usually questioned the opinions of others, but she was smart enough to recognize another’s expertise, and Reynhard Ordi had more experience managing people than she did. She could assess information at a glance; he could assess a man, and though his prejudice was obvious, he had made a point or two that she couldn’t help but consider. That was difficult to say aloud, however, so she generalized: “You’re on your own, in here. No one really sees you, or knows who you are. I just want to know what you know.”

That little smile widened. “You’re a bad liar,” Imari said. “You had best be careful about that. But, in your dishonesty, you’ve stumbled across wisdom. You should know this, first of all: the captain trusts me, completely. We have a history.” This made Gail frown, and she asked for its meaning. “He was compatable with the capsuleer program, and I wasn’t.” She held out a long, dark arm, running a finger sensually down the shivering line of her inner forearm. “I like this too much.”

Gail felt something rise in her throat, something indescribable, and she chewed it down. Unimportant. “What else?” she asked, and the dark smile widened.

“You know, I really would make a very excellent spy. People pay very little attention to me in here. It takes a capsuleer to pilot a ship, but people to make it function, and I make the people function. They tend to see me as a machine. Not that I discourage it.” She tapped one fingernail against her inset eyeglass, dimpling the transparent material and making the bright scrolling text smear and distend. “It helps me pick up information. I’ve had all the safeguards on internal comms removed, you know. I can remotely activate any wrist communicator and spy on any conversation. Captain feeds video data directly to me in here, so I can watch what I hear. He’s usually paying attention to the outside world. He needs me to pay attention to the inner.”

“You understand how that makes you suspicious,” Gail said, and was rewarded with a sharp choke of laughter. “Reynhard is an idiot. It happens in the military. Goes after the easiest and most obvious targets. He’ll be sniffing after Tion next.”

“And why not?” Gail asked. “He’s had access to the engines. He keeps to himself. I’d never even heard of him before.”

“Of course you haven’t. You’ve barely stepped out of your lab. The big, wide universe scares you planetary types.” Another laugh, harsh as a hound attempting the expression. “No, he’s another obvious choice. I’ve been keeping tabs, but he’s quiet. Does his job, and little else. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the man’s been lobotomized. He’s not very interesting. I’ve found more interesting things elsewhere.”

“Like what?” she asked, and the tribeswoman wheeled around and touched a few strategic points on her console. A thin black bar popped onscreen, sparking with visually represented sound. “I can do better than tell you; I’ll show you,” she said, and depressed a button. A clamor came over the speakers, a rattle of unidentifiable destruction. She heard a heavy slap, like a punch, and a low cry. A voice was shouting, a woman’s voice, shrieking high and barely intelligible. “If you lost it, I will KILL you!” Again and again, that smacking sound, dry and organic. “I will put you in the airlock and shoot you into space! I don’t need you here! I don’t need anyone!” At that, the sound devolved into more helpless crashes, unfiltered noise, which continued until Imari touched the console and it stopped.

“Miss Candice Callah, all revealed. Interesting, yes?” The tribeswoman tented her fingers, still staring at the screen, the bright words written on the console and in her eyeglass curiously congruous. “I’ve been looking into her. Why would such an obviously cosmopolitan woman want to volunteer for a research mission? She does a good job of looking like an airhead, but so do many good spies, I hear.”

The question spilled out of Gail, unrestrained, spoken as soon as it was thought: “Why do you trust me with this?”

That dark smile, reflected. “I didn’t, at first. I’ve done some looking into you, as well. I’ve read your papers. Seen your awards. And I’m a better judge of character than Reynhard could ever be. You’re absolutely guileless, Gail Caedo. The drones are more important to you than any amount of ISK. And you bear no small resemblance to your brilliant grandfather…”

Something else, bubbling up, indescribable. She felt her hands form fists, actual fists, with her long nails digging into her untempered palms; her eyes throbbed, a memory pressed behind them, and it took some time for it to pass. Time that Imari Heruar spent watching her, little lines of text scrolling over her bright glass eye, a mocking sort of mirth. She spun, and walked out, and did not even pause to say good-bye – but Imari said, “Wait,” and she held still.

“There’s one other thing. Captain knows it. You should too. That beacon that’s apparently hidden somewhere in the ship?” She heard the patter of fingernail on glass, imagined the lens dimpling in rhythm: tap-tap-tap, pause, tap-tap-tap-tap. “That’s wrong. Dead wrong. The hull itself is resonating. We’re not housing the beacon – we are the beacon. And who among us would know how to rig that?”

A gruff voice, a bald head. A man she had met only recently, who was impatient to get back at the systems of the ship. “Conn,” she said. She almost laughed herself. Imari grinned from the darkness, her mocking voice like a song. “And isn’t that just so obvious?” The sound of a chair swiveling back, the squeak as a woman settled herself again into a familiar position.

“Search well, little genius. More minds work faster. Don’t worry.” Tap tap tap. Pause. Tap tap tap tap. “I’ll keep an eye on you.”
***

Meal times were difficult, but unavoidable. Somehow, they had managed to remain alive and unmolested long enough to grow hungry, and took to eating in shifts of ten. Each of the assembled crewmen sat in their assigned pairs, or clumped in their usual groups, staring at the others with a mix of worry and outright hostility. The ship was beginning to smell like nervous sweat, a spongy stench that lingered above the scent of cryo-cooked fish and boiling potatoes. Gail was there with a trio of younger researchers, gathered in a pile of incestuous conversation. They had little to discuss, other than their situation, their paranoia, the details of their research. She could hear snatches of similar speech elsewhere. The fear was everywhere.

The fear was in her. But as it always had been, it became curiosity, a puzzle to solve. She had little mind left for the details of the signal spike; that was solved, done, complete. It had worked, and she had seen it work. That one bright node of information traveling to the heart of the hive, watching the million-strong sequence cycle until it found the correct key, and then… and then a legion of buzzing drones stopping dead in space, just drifting like the inanimate flotsam they were always intended to be. Old wrongs righted, that puzzle complete. But this…

She found her eyes drifting to Candice Callah as she worked in the kitchen. Quartermaster often meant chef as well, especially on smaller ships, and the large woman looked positively matronly as she bustled behind the counter, clearing dishes and instructing the sallow-skinned teenage boy in a clear and friendly voice. It was easy to see behind her facade now. The makeup hid the blotches on her skin, but could do nothing for the ragged ruin that was her teeth. Gail noted that Candice never smiled, and neither did her assistant, but that was due more to the fresh bruises peeking from beneath his brown, shaggy hairline, in all likelihood.

Narcotics. Had to be. Perhaps she had been exactly what was advertised, at one point in her life. That was gone now, done, a flaking paint-job over a duplicitous monster of a woman. Enough left to scramble for the ISK needed to pay for her habit, enough to beguile her way onto an exceedingly important research vessel. Closed smiles. Good qualifications. That was apparently all that was needed to kill them all and damn the universe.
Gail found herself standing. Plate in hand, she walked over to the countertop, and favored Candice Callah with a smile, white and gleaming with teeth. There was no bravery in her, of course, no courage, and standing there was like standing on an iceberg. It chilled her, it made her nauseous, but damn everything about her, she was relentlessly curious, and she would see this puzzle to its solution. So when she leaned in to hand over her dishes, she pressed her nose into the woman’s hair and whispered the cleverest thing she had thought of all day: “I found what you lost.”

She still had the presence of mind to let the plate fall naturally to the table. “Yes,” she said loudly, “I do think I have an extra fillet. Just come BACK here and I’ll GET it for you.” Not subtle, truly, but she could see the craving now, hidden in the yellow portions of her eyes, and against all good judgment she lifted up the countertop and stepped into the fragrant heat of the kitchen.

A single meaty fist grabbed her by the labcoat and slammed her against the wall. “Where,” came the demand, not a question but an instruction, and Gail could barely speak for the fist grinding into her throat. “Engine room,” she croaked, “Can’t get it by myself.” The fingers eased a little, the eyes flicking about in silent confusion. She shot a look to her assistant, who had dutifully put himself as far away from the two women as he could, by the sink, with the knives. Gail could practically see the glacial and withdrawn system of thought moving across her features: suspicion, want, caution, want, want, want. The fingers opened, and then tightened again, this time wrapping around Gail’s throat. Her hand was large enough to encircle her neck and touch fingertips at the back.

“Take me there,” Candice instructed her, “And if this is a trick, I’m going to snap your neck and say I caught you poisoning the food.” Gail could only nod, and then the pressure was released. Candice tore off her apron and gripped Gail’s arm, giving her a harsh jerk towards the service door before kicking it open and pulling her into the corridor. Imari’s voice echoed: You’re a bad liar. You had best be careful about that.

The truth was, she hadn’t thought about what she would do once she got Candice to the scene of her own handiwork. Would a dedicated saboteur, especially one motivated by such an unquenchable need as narcotics, really be humbled by the sight of their own work? Another echo: Intuition first, examination later. Reynhard is an idiot. You’re good with curiosity.

Candice led the way. That made it easy. Holding a palm over her wrist to muffle the sound, she switched on her communicator, leaving it open. The big woman stomped down the corridor so hard that it rang beneath her feet like a gong, long and sad and hollow. The ship was small, a slim dark little interceptor that by all means should have been speeding around space like a merry wasp, but the trip felt as if it took eons. Candice’s eyes flashing behind her, wide and hungry, and her occasional threats an echo that spun through the communicator, through Gail’s soul, and filled her up with worry. Eons.

But eventually, they were there.

The explosion that had torn apart the Sliver’s engines was evident even through the thick blast shielding that made up the door. It hung at an odd angle, and couldn’t manage to open all the way, just slide sadly to the side and beat its crinkled edges against the twisted frame. Inside was absolute ruin. It wasn’t just destroyed; it was cold, crusted with ice, the kind of intense cold that spoke of a hull breach nearby. Gail thought she felt wind moving against her feet, sucking oxygen through one or more microscopic fissues out into the emptiness of the universe. The engines were barely a husk, an empty shell through which the decimated innards were visible, chewed and blackened with fire. A smell still hung in the air, the improbable sense of burning metal.
There was a huge presence at her back. A breath on her neck, warm and terrible. “Where is it?” Candice asked, and Gail pointed at the only thing she was capable of looking at: the cavernous wreck of the engine. “In there,” she lied, not daring to look back at the woman in case the falsehood was written on her guileless face. “There’s a… rupture. If I lean in too much without someone to pull me back, I’m going to get stuck.”

The woman’s heavy tread took her over to the wrecked machinery, and she leaned her face into the yawning hole, squinting inside. Gail felt the fear tie up inside her, knot and writhe like mating snakes, and it was as cold inside her as it was outside. She could have cried when Candice leaned back, quite satisfied. Bad light, bad dreams, and a very bad addiction – perhaps she had seen what she wanted to see, because she nodded, and waved Gail over. “All right then, come on. Get in,” she said. And there was a terrible danger there, because Gail had lied, but the curiosity overmatched everything else.

She stepped forward. She leaned into the engine, the charred wires picking and pulling at her hair. Her labcoat fluttered over her back as she leaned in, and she considered taking it off – but no, if she were to die here, she’d want to be found just as she was now. A scientist, satisfying herself.

The worst thing she ever had to do: to lean her body down into the machine corpse, her arms ahead of her, brushing the black and sparking machinery, with only the bright blue of her wrist communicator for light. She bent at the waist and slid herself further, until only the tips of her feet remained up; her fingers touched the hull and sent a shock of cold through her body, and she felt the wind harshly here, pulling at her hair and breath. The light was dim, terrible, and she could barely see, so she thrashed one arm around, and then another, looking for something, some clue, some idea, even an improbable and fictitious dropped narcotic stash, but down in the belly of the engine which should be thick with wiring, there was only ash and the sound of the empty hull creaking.

Like a cruise missile, like a ghost kiss, it struck her.

“I have it,” she said. “I have it! Pull me up! Pull me up right now!” And Candice’s strong hands were on her feet and pulling her out, and she must look horrible, half-mad, covered with ash and grease and wide eyes mad with new knowledge. She laid her empty hands on Candice’s shoulders and shrieked with revelation, with a terrible, terrible fear, because she had solved the puzzle and knew what it meant for her.

“Give it to me,” said Candice, and Gail slapped her, without even thinking about it. “You idiot, you half-mad junkie, do you even know what’s down there?” She felt herself raving, lecturing, but she couldn’t stop. “Nothing! Absolutely nothing! No bomb could possibly be planted that deep; it would have to have been constructed into the engine itself! The only way to cause such complete destruction on such a deep level would be with a concentrated, pinpointed electrical discharge!”

Candice reared up and lunged at her, but Gail wasn’t there anymore; she was halfway across the room, running her hands through her wild hair, talking, talking to make sense of the thing that she had uncovered. “Don’t you see? Didn’t you hear it? Your footsteps echoed! In the hall! In this room! Every inch of space on this ship is dedicated to some vital system, to some essential circuit. Do you know what’s just below the hallway outside?”

Candice’s hand found her throat just after she had time to croak out, “The captain’s capsule!”.

The fingers failed to tighten.

“It’s so absolutely obvious, so completely simple. If any company, any faction wanted the signal spike, they could have just shot this ship to scrap and salvaged it from the wreckage. But they didn’t just need the module. They needed us.” In her mind: a hundred thousand signal sequences, a hundred thousand more, and the potential, oh the potential, of the different scripts and commands that could be loaded, the different things the drones could be made to do. Move. Grow. Evolve. Attack. A quick, mobile fleet outfitted with signal spikes could have unlimited, growing sleeper cells in every corner of the universe. Anywhere this intergalactic pest had been allowed to grow, there would be a weapon. And them, dead in space. No one would know.

She spoke rapid-fire, talking to the void, barely aware of the wild-eyed junkie in the room with her. “Think about it. Why disarm the military?”

“Why are there only five engineers on board this ship?”

“Why was the captain so eager to start us questioning each other’s motives?”

Her hand was at her wrist, her voice screaming into the communicator. “Imari, do you hear this? You have to believe me!” And though the bright red light indicated that her words had gone through, there was no response, but for the sad humming of a console left unattended.
***

All of them were there, all six chiefs of staff, in that cramped little closet, that dark close space. Candice Callah, shaking in the doorway, not sure what to say, not sure what to think, so out of her depth and wanting, wanting, wanting. Reynhard Ordi, swearing under his breath, his lips moving slow and vulgar, his mustache twitching. Conn Harraday, dark circles under his eyes, his fingers bleeding, bewilderment every part of his face. Tion Lux, quiet as he always was, a dark, unnoticeable slip of a man sitting at an unmanned secondary console, absorbing everything.

Imari Heruar, dead in her seat. Boots melted to the floor and the scent of singed flesh everywhere in the air. If she had hair, it would have stood on end. And her face, the hideous electrocuted grimace, the dead glass lens melted and ran in black tears down her dark, pretty cheek.

They weren’t watching her. Her part was done. Whatever she had believed of the captain, she had been betrayed; whatever he had believed of her, it had been fulfilled, utterly. They were watching the console, the brightest thing in the room, because the combined technical knowhow of an engineer and an operations chief and a scientist managed to reroute the abandonned overview into this tiny little room.

They could see the retreating green sparkle that was their captain’s capsule speeding through space, the bright point of his thrusters as he left them stranded in their disabled ship, with the weapon that could cure or conquer the universe.

They could see the line of six Caldari vessels as they warped in to meet him.

A flicker of fire, and Gail could smell the smoke of Reynhard’s foul cigarillos. She could not fault him for them now. They were defeated, outsmarted, outdone, and they would be pressed into serving their enemies or they would be compelled to do so by endless suffering. Gail remembered how the earth felt beneath her feet, how the night looked before she ever journeyed out into space.

Three fingers, one nail broken, on the sequence of keys that would begin the self-destruct.

One way or another, she’d never get back there again.