Friendly Fire

by Michelle Levigne

  Enlo's curse on the greedy sub-humans who traded their humanity to adapt and ally with the insects that wove those cocoons of living death.

  She fought down creeping internal cold to face her duty as she snapped out her first orders. The sooner they got this investigation finished, the sooner could get her children out of this sparsely explored sector of space that had just turned deadly.

  First step: repair that leak. The danger lay in sealing toxic gases into the ship from ruptured fuel cells and components of the ship's engines that had been damaged in the attack. Rescue operations in space always perched on a fine line. Would they save lives or destroy what thin chance at life anyone might be clinging to at that moment? Especially for those who had somehow escaped cocooning? Time was of the essence, but hurrying could trigger bigger problems.

  "All scanners on full power," Taggert reported when Genys turned to him. She thought a quick prayer of thanks to Enlo that she didn't have to fight with the Gate team about priorities. When lives were in danger, her ship's mission to find Gates and the Gatekeepers went to the bottom of the list.

  "My team is ready," Dr. Tahl reported. The sounds of activity came through the momentary audio link from medical. All pertinent data had been streaming to her portion of the rescue team without going through the bridge. Some commanders insisted on filtering all data, but Genys considered it a waste of time and lives.

  "Jasper?" Genys said. The head engineer wouldn't chime in until asked. He considered talking a waste of time and air, when he could be plotting how to repair that survey ship.

  "Shuttle is ready to launch whenever you give the word," he responded, his voice growing fainter. He was walking away from his data screen, likely retrieving his pressure suit and helmet.

  "The word is given. Life and light, people. Full discretion." She sat back in her command chair and tried to relax. It was hard to take a supervisory position, when she had been on-site and hands-on for the last four rescue operations. It saved time, frustration, and lives to let each component of the rescue team perform its job without having to report to her or ask permission. If there was conflict, they knew how to work together, who to defer to, and how to keep from getting in each other's way.

  That didn't mean she had to like being relegated to watching.

  A message flashed on her screen. M'kar had put herself on the first-in search team. It wasn't a request for permission, just a statement of what she was doing. Genys thought of all the dracs that could be on board that derelict ship. They counted as children too, didn't they?

  ~~~~~~

  "Airlocks are all sealed," JM reported. "Looks like life-support shifted into standby mode when that bay evacuated. Did some damage, some explosive decompression, but the bulkheads sealed. Need to check the air quality, get life-support back online."

  M'kar tuned out the rest of what he was saying. She rested her hands against the bulkhead behind her, standing in the shuttle bay with the rest of the first-in team. They still had a wait while Jasper's team dove through the Corona's failsafes and security systems. They needed to locate fun little surprises like clouds of gas, poisonous or explosive, that were inert until reacting to a warm body in a pressure suit, for instance, or the ratio of oxygen in the air increased. Then Decker's people had to convince the Corona's security system to let them in, that they weren't the raiders who had been tearing the ship apart, however long ago that happened. It was always smart to get some cooperation from the systems that were turning more sentient and autonomous as time went on. The last thing they needed, while making their first assessment and looking for survivors, was to have the ship turn psycho on them. It had happened. Especially when some self-proclaimed genius or expert tried to give ships pseudo-brains. Those computing wonders never revealed their fatal flaws until after they had been installed inside the latest starship with the biggest, baddest weapons and the most delicate triggers ever devised. By Enlo’s mercy, quick-thinking, nasty fighters like Captain Shryne were around to tie knots in the logic circuits of those ships before they started a doomsday countdown.

  You're entirely too philosophical today, Thyal said.

  You're entirely too patient, she shot back. Aren't you getting antsy, waiting for me to get that egg sent to you?

  Touching the bulkhead didn't help her pierce whatever might be interfering with locating the drac minds. M'kar begged Enlo that something was indeed interfering, and everyone was alive and had hunkered down. They were just playing dead, muting all life-signs to hide from the Hivers or whoever might be out there, looking for blood in the metaphorical water.

  Being antsy implies I am unable to sit still.

  You know what I mean. Still, M'kar grinned at her dim reflection in the faceplate of her suit. Thyal was regaining the use of his hands and arms, but he was so much dead weight from his ribs downward.

  His chuckle reached across the millions of kilometers of space, the numerous jump gates that lay between the Defender and Le'anka. It helped her relax, just a little.

  I think the time has come to make the grand confession.

  What? She almost said it aloud.

  It's better for my parents, at least, to know that we are in communication. That way they will be on my side, able to clear the barriers when the egg arrives.

  Bad enough you're stuck in a hover chair, but the Masters will be inside your brain so much, you might get booted out. They'll drag me off the Defender and back to Le'anka to deep dive in my head, too.

  Stop pretending all you care about is staying free.

  Thyal, has it occurred to you that they might decide the dymcrait venom has something to do with this long-distance bond between us? Some autocratic idiot is going to ram through a research project on uses for dymcrait venom and stingers and all --

  Has it occurred to you the hatch is open and everyone is going in without you? His laughter silenced the snarl building in her throat.

  M'kar's face warmed as she stepped through the hatch, into the ship proper. The others were in assigned teams, while she was just there to search, period. She stepped around the medical and engineering teams. They checked the auxiliary screens plugged into the first data port inside the ship. She headed down the corridor to the right. If she remembered the layout of the Corona from Dulit's letters, there was one corridor on each of the four levels that circled the ship. General living compartments were on the inside of the circle, such as the mess hall, recreation and fitness, medical, socializing area or living quarters. The outside of each corridor had labs, schoolroom for the children, engineering workshops, and storage for more delicate items that needed adjustable environments and couldn't go into the cargo bays.

  Besides, think of the benefits of having the entire Fleet searching for dymcraits, he offered, as she turned off the light projecting out from the frame of her faceplate. Emergency lighting on the Corona was enough to see by. If dymcraits are real --

  Then so are infrenx. Agreed. All right, tell your parents. Warn mine, because you know the Masters are going to want to do a whole new study on my twisted genetic heritage.

  Let them try to pin down Ashrock and take samples.

  The image of a dozen doctors in different disciplines, trying to wrestle her massive, gentle giant, mischief-maker father into submitting to days of testing raised M'kar's spirits. The sight of the first cocoon, floating in the low gravity of the Corona, was enough of a shock to jolt a shout of dismay from her throat.

  Chapter Seven

  Disgusted fascination immediately silenced her. M'kar had to remind herself she was fully sealed in her suit before she could touch the cocoon. She had seen pictures during Basic. She had read about the Hivers and the cocoons rescued from Hiver ships and off worlds where the insect-Human cooperative race had planted the hives that gave them their name. In all the stories from those who had the grisly task of gathering up cocoons to take to Medical Station Anwesta, she had never heard of a Hiver-damaged vessel with cocoons left inside.

  "Cocoon," she
said. That buzzing and banging in her ears wasn't her furious heart, but the voices of several people, including her captain, demanding to know what had happened.

  That one word jolted everyone to silence.

  Garion, Thyal said.

  I know.

  M'kar couldn't feel anything through her glove, but she imagined the cocoon, an organic kind of stasis chamber, trying to send the parasitic filiments of its outer layer through her pressure suit, into her flesh, to race along her nerves and take over her brain. She fought the urge to slam her fist into the cocoon. Honestly, who would she hurt? Not the Hiver who had imprisoned a member of the Corona's crew. She had no way of knowing if the Human being inside that dull silver and gray and sickly green capsule could feel anything. She prayed the people inside cocoons were truly asleep, so deeply unconscious they didn't dream. The thought of being aware she was cocooned, unable to move, unable to make a sound, with no hope of being freed someday, would drive her insane. Eventually. And the length of time she fought to hold onto hope and reason would just make the torment worse.

  She pushed the cocoon down to the deck. As long as it wasn't disturbed, it would stay there in the partial gravity. She turned and continued down the curving corridor, and saw another cocoon after only three steps. And another beyond it.

  Had the Hivers left all their prisoners here? If so, why?

  ~~~~~~

  "Do it." Jasper reached up to wipe sweat from his forehead. Hard to do in a pressure suit and helmet. He grunted and yanked his magnetic-soled boot from the deck of the cargo bay, moving out of the way of the repair crew and repair 'bots that swarmed into position, inside and outside the ship.

  He watched five monitors. Four members of the team pumped sealant into the gash in the belly of the ship. Three more members on each side unrolled sheets of polymer across the ceramic plating. The sealant expanded in the vacuum, adhering to the polymer. The team outside signaled that everything was in place. Half a second later, the team inside turned to Jasper. He flipped the switch, sending an energy stream through the polymer sheets, transforming the molecular structure to make it tougher than steel, melding with the body of the ship. Meanwhile, he kept watch on the sensors reading the ship’s atmosphere, ready to halt all operations the moment all the loose debris, gasses, and chemicals freed by the savagery of the Hivers' attack, too heavy to escape the cargo bay, reacted in any way that could turn dangerous.

  "Primary leak sealed." He gestured for the team to move on to the smaller punctures before he got confirmation from the Defender.

  ~~~~~~

  Cocoons.

  Why were there cocoons scattered throughout the ship? Why did they look like they had been dropped just as the insect half of the Hivers finished encapsulating their victims?

  Tahl's eyes narrowed as she stepped around yet another cocoon in the corridor on the second level of the ship. She had learned long ago to step aside, to feel nothing while she raced against time to heal bodies ravaged by accidents or brutality. Some thought her Ankuar heritage enabled her to be calm, controlled, almost icy in the face of blood and pain and suffering. She didn't disabuse them of the false impression. Ankuar were only stoic and cold in front of what they considered "inferior species." Among their own kind, they were driven by their emotions, guided by extreme standards of honor. Everything focused on self and destroying any signs of fear or shame, using violence to wipe out second thoughts and rationality that would not profit first the individual, then the clan, then the race. She often wondered how the Ankuar had survived so long, as their brutal principles should have brought the race to the point of suicide centuries ago.

  The bizarre, totally uncharacteristic littering of cocoons throughout the Corona bothered her. Not enough to interfere with her duties in the rescue operation, but enough to register and make her pause and think beyond the requirements of her duty. While the logic that drove the Hivers lay just beyond the grasp of most Humans in the Alliance, there were a few things that were understood. One was that no Hiver spent the time and resources and energy to paralyze victims and wrap them in the cocoons that somehow kept them alive and brain-dead, and then just abandoned those cocoons.

  So what had happened on the Corona to change the known, seemingly unbreakable pattern?

  Her first walk-through of the ship confirmed what the sensors had already indicated. The energy resonance signature of Hivers: verified. The destruction of the databanks: standard Hiver practice. The predominance of destruction in the cargo holds, as opposed to pilfering: standard Hiver practice. Tahl counted enough bodies in the main traffic areas of the ship to calculate that most of the crew was here. Granted, she hadn't accounted for all of them, and no cocoons had been found yet small enough to contain children. She didn't like what that absence told her, after the new intel on Hivers. Still, she had established enough of a pattern to report.

  "How much of the ship still needs to be explored?" Genys' voice buzzed slightly in the speaker of Tahl's helmet. That indicated atmospheric pressure was nearly replenished, meaning the repair team in life-support had taken the ship out of hibernation mode.

  "We've only looked in the main traffic areas, the common areas, the bridge. We still have two cargo bays, the shuttle bay, and then the living quarters." Tahl turned to glance down the corridor at several cocoons slowly floating downward. The engineers had restored artificial gravity gradually, to prevent further damage and a general mess as floating items hit the deck at any kind of speed.

  "I'm sending over a few people to help speed it up, in case we need to hoist and run. We've been getting the tallies from engineering and the other rescue team, and we've come up with a nasty possibility." She took a deep breath. "This might be a trap."

  "As in, the Hivers can read our approach from far enough away we couldn't sense them, they withdrew so fast they didn't take any of the cocoons, ready for transfer to their ship, and they're waiting until we're too busy with the rescue operation, and then they'll attack." Tahl sighed. "I was hoping that was just typical Ankuar paranoia whispering to me."

  That earned a few weary chuckles from whoever was in Genys' office, conferring as the reports came in.

  "Can I add something?" Med-Tech Brea said, her voice coming from just a few meters down the corridor and the link with the ship.

  "Helpful or depressing?" Genys said.

  "I found evidence of what appears to be chemical combustion. Char on a wall." She raised a hand to gesture for Tahl to join her.

  "Since when do the Hivers attack with chemical weapons?" Tahl said. "Could they be working with the Gleaners now?"

  "Gleaners are the scavengers, following in the wake of the Hivers," Maora offered, sounding like she sat several meters from the audio pickup. "It might be interesting, figuring out if it's something the Hivers allow or even encourage."

  "More like the Hivers let them follow because they can't do anything with Gleaner brains," someone offered, with a metallic ringing in the voice. Tahl wondered if the interference was a warning sign.

  "Organic source of the chemicals," Tahl announced a few moments later, after waving her scanner rod across the char Brea pointed out to her. They exchanged frowns. "I think what caught Brea's attention is … honestly, Captain, this looks like a Human body was caught in a quick, hot blast of fire from a source …" She stepped back and measured the fan-shaped charring against the wall. The longer she looked at it, the more she was convinced someone had been hit with a stream of extremely hot fire from overhead. It looked like the Human profiles against buildings, burned into them from old-style atomic blasts.

  "Organic source?" Genys said, when Tahl described her impressions to her. "I was hoping to hear from M'kar by now, but the silence is a bad sign."

  "Hear about what? She's been helping us tally cocoons and bringing them into the social hall on the level below us. What is she looking for?"

  "This is just getting more tangled. M'kar? Any luck?"

  "Not a blip, not a whisper," M'kar responded. She
sounded weary enough, Tahl almost ordered her back to the ship.

  "Of what?" Brea asked.

  "The Corona discovered a semi-sentient lifeform on the other side of a new Chute,” Genys said. “Enough of them should be on board that M'kar's classmate, also a Talent, had some difficulty controlling them. I would have expected them to do something to defend their …" A strained chuckle escaped her. "Can't call them owners. Adopted parents?"

  "What kind of creature can generate flames?" Brea mused. Then her eyes widened as she locked gazes with Tahl.

  "The crew named them dracs. They're around a meter long and they look like dragons." Genys sounded as if the admission exhausted her.

  Such creatures made sense to Tahl. Looking at the charring pattern on the wall, the explanation of a miniature dragon was logical. So the next question was where these miniature dragons had gone, when the Hivers entered the ship. She swallowed, suddenly queasy, at the thought of sentient creatures being sucked out the gashes in the ship's bulkhead, out into vacuum to suffocate and suffer sudden decompression. Yet the inner corridors and compartments of the ship hadn't suffered any decompression, the air had simply gone bad from lack of circulation. The undamaged portions of the ship's computer had registered a drastic drop in use of oxygen and heat. Because everyone was cocooned. So unless the baby dragons had been in the cargo hold that got sliced open, or in the cargo pod that had been explosively detached or jettisoned …

  "Where are the dragons?" she mused aloud.

  "Dracs," Genys corrected. "By the way, they teleport."

  "Uh, you could have warned us about that before we came on board," Brea said, ducking as if expecting something to appear from overhead and dive bomb her.

  Word went around to the other members of the teams searching the ship and making general assessments of the damage, the survivors, and all the anomalies.

  Now, Tahl understood not just what had brought M'kar over to the Corona, but what kept her wandering around, looking slightly dazed or distracted. She was searching, sending out a psionic call, trying to find those mythical creatures that should have been on the ship. Knowing how the Nisandrian half-blood put all her strength and force of will into her duties when dealing with animals, she would work herself into a crippling headache by the end of the shift. Tahl remembered that a classmate of M'kar's was on the Corona, and she ached for her.