It looked like they too had at least two genders. Both the women and the men were flat-chested, and maybe Oliver was imagining things but some faces seemed more delicate while others were broader and more muscled bodies. The third body they'd found belonged to someone who had been almost twice as big as the rest. Overweight, maybe. Or maybe Oliver’s imagination was beginning to get a stranglehold on his sanity.
Oliver was no anthropologist but he had to think anyone who studied any cultures at all would be having the time of their life right now—if they could do a better job than Oliver of ignoring how quickly this could all go wrong.
At least they didn't find any children.
"We're within a few rooms of the power source now," Sprocket said as their team approached yet another closed door. He started to open this one like he had a dozen before that, but this time things went a little differently, forcing Oliver's heart into his throat before he even realized what was going on around him.
As soon as the door had disengaged from the frame around it, gravity righted itself, returning to something close to what Oliver was used to. His suit rustled around his body ever so slightly.
There was air outside their suits. Atmosphere. Gravity.
Nobody moved to step inside the next room right away, waiting to see if anything else would happen.
But nothing did. The room remained dark beyond the beams of their flashlights.
"This part of the ship must not have taken as much damage as the rest," Gwynn said, guessing blindly the same way that Oliver was doing internally.
"If there's enough power to run the environmental systems or life support, we might be able to get their computer up and running," Sprocket said. "Maybe we can find out what happened here."
"We're not going to know how to read whatever we find, or probably even how their system works," Oliver said, not sure it mattered.
"Still. I want to see it. We could make a copy somehow, and bring it back home."
"Either way, we keep going."
Leading the way, Oliver stepped beyond the door and into the next room.
Two faces, both alive and completely inhuman, stared back at him.
Chapter Eleven – Evie
Trying to stay silent as Captain Briggs had taken Sprocket and Gwynn through the alien ship, working their way room to room while everyone else waited, had been bad enough.
Everyone left on board agreed that they wished they could swap places and see the alien structure for themselves, and that they were at least a bit grateful not to be the ones waiting to see if there was anything on board that might kill them in a moment.
Hearing Gwynn grumble a steady stream of swear words before everyone's mics cut out completely might have been the worst feeling Evie had ever experienced.
They're dead. It was the first and only thought that entered her mind when they couldn’t reach the away team for over a minute. She never said the words out loud, but there hadn't been any need.
They'd all known this might happen. It was a risk, but so was any other move they made.
Everyone left on the bridge stayed quiet while Lincoln frantically tried to reestablish the comm connections. A minute later, the sound of Safa retching in the corner joined the low hum of computers and machinery.
Had they all died right away? Evie wondered as Safa pulled herself back up in the corner, averting her gaze as she turned back toward the view screen, still showing the destroyed alien structure.
They might need help, while Evie and the others were still sitting on the safety of the bridge, too stunned to be useful. Oliver had ordered Lincoln to take the ship and head further into the void if they hadn't been back within the hour. But then that hour had been extended to two, and beyond. And even if anyone on board had been willing to leave them behind, there was nowhere else to go.
There was no choice but to go and at least try to help, risking the entire crew meeting the same fate, dying among alien wreckage, never to be heard from by humanity again.
"We should go," Evie said, surprising herself. All this, the watching in horror, the sinking dread, wasn't helping anything. And they didn't have any confirmation that the others were dead. They could be injured or trapped, or the equipment might be malfunctioning.
"They're coming back," Safa yelled before Evie's words had a chance to land, more emotion pouring into her voice than Evie had heard since they'd met. "The shuttle, it's coming back.”
"I still can't get a signal," Lincoln's voice said through the speakers overhead.
"Is there any chance that's not them?" Evie asked, playing through a million scenarios in her mind, all of which were better suited to movies than their situation. Sure, it would be horrific if somehow a malignant AI had taken over the shuttle after killing the crew and was now on its way to do the same to them. But for today, she was far too tired to accept any but the most obvious answers to any questions being thrown her way.
"We'll find out shortly," Safa said.
Shortly took longer than anyone would have liked. The shuttles journey from the structure back to the Lexiconis felt like it took twice as long as the trip over, though the shuttle was behaving exactly as it was supposed to. Lincoln even managed to magnify it on the view screen enough to see inside. The image was blurry, but there was no denying Gwynn's hair.
They weren't dead. She hadn't gotten them killed. Not yet anyway.
Because if anyone died today, if anyone died here at all, Evie knew the blame would lie right on her shoulders. Even once Evie had realized that her family business might have been built on secrets and lies, she'd had options.
One. Ignore it.
Two. Confront her father directly.
Three. Steal her brother's computer, hijack an unlabeled set of coordinates, and hire a crew to get you there. To do what, exactly? Unmask a conspiracy that might not exist anywhere but in your mind? And get said crew sucked into this void, only to have them all murdered by aliens.
Because being brought here by some inexplicable anomaly wasn't actual evidence against her family or anyone else. She still had no idea what Mason had been hiding or if it was related to what had happened to the Lexiconis. Maybe someone at SolTek had found evidence of something strange at the coordinates she'd found, and her dad had only planned to go get a closer look? It was a reasonable explanation. One of millions.
And any one of those reasons would mean that she'd risked people's lives for nothing at all. On a hunch. A whim.
Watching the shuttle disappear on screen, Evie let herself breathe one last sigh of relief. Maybe no one had died yet, but there was no longer any way to deny that her family had been hiding something. A weapon? A new energy source? Not every possibility had to be underhanded, but whatever they'd been trying to keep from the public, there was no way her brother had anything to do with it.
The Lexiconis rumbled as the shuttle docked. "Should we go down there and meet them?" Evie wondered aloud.
Safa's eyes grew wide as she considered the question. "If the alternative is waiting patiently for them to get back and explain what happened over there … let's say yes, shall we? We did the patient thing, now I need a play by play of everything they just went through. Likely several times."
"I should probably stay up here," Lincoln said, frowning at his console as his answer played aloud. "Just in case?" His eyes turned on Safa as his body tensed in place. The last thing in the world that guy wanted was to be stuck on the bridge while all his friends got to learn all the mysteries of the universe. And who could blame him?
"You can track everything that's happening here no matter where you are on the ship," Safa said.
"Good enough for me. Shall we?"
The three of them moved through the lowest level of the ship where the shuttle had docked in under two minutes, making it to down in the depths right as Captain Briggs entered the same hallway, talking animatedly to someone Evie had never seen before. Someone too tall, too covered in fur and with too pointy a head to be human.
Besid
e her, Safa let out a little squeak, and Lincoln took a step back, placing one hand on each of Evie and Safa's arms, tugging them back with him.
Sprocket came next, his dark eyes fixed in a perpetually stunned expression. Behind him was what Evie thought was a woman, and while she looked less alien than whoever Oliver was talking with, Evie couldn't be sure. She was shaped very much like a human, with no hair on her head, a rounded face and flesh that seemed to be the same texture as skin, but as black as night and shimmering under the white body suit the alien wore.
The crew of the Lexiconis had found alien life. Humanoid looking alien life. And they'd brought them back on board their ship, chatting with at least one of them like they were old friends. Each of the humans looked a bit stunned, but the aliens didn't seem to be threatening anyone. If anything, they looked relieved.
A flash of movement near the group's feet caught Evie's eye as she noticed a third lifeform, not at all humanoid following along on four legs behind everyone else. His fur was thicker than that of the alien speaking to the captain, exploding from its otter-shaped body in an untamed silver poof. Its eyes were dark and curious, with a flat snout and black furry eyebrows.
Evie's mind may as well have completely imploded for all the functioning it did in those next moments as she stared, openmouthed, at the approaching group.
Aliens.
Stranger still, when Oliver and his companion came into hearing range, the large, gray creature was speaking stilted English in response to whatever the ship's captain just asked. Behind them, everyone else walked on in silence, including the alien woman, whose gaze never settled, taking in every inch of the space around her. Both aliens held nothing but balled up fabric, most likely spacesuits built for their own species' specifications.
Weird.
Gwynn's hand rested on her hip against the holster of the gun she always carried but Evie had never seen her raise. Earlier, when Evie had been merely listening in to what the others were experiencing, Gwynn had been beyond excited by the idea of aliens, but she looked far warier of live ones than she had been of dead bodies.
"Well, team," Oliver said, stopping his group in front of the one Safa is leading. "You'll never believe what we found."
Evie could only stare on, trying to find the words to express any part of what she was feeling as Safa leapt straight into a string of questions, not breaking once for anyone to answer.
The male alien, held up his hands, both with three fingers and a slightly longer version of a thumb, chuckling in a way that sounded eerily human. "I am very glad to see you all. We'll have a chance to get to know one another better, I would love to know the names of those I am speak with. I have met your Captain Oliver, Gwynn and Spricket."
"Sprocket," the engineer said, automatically correcting the mistake, having moved to stand with Safa and Lincoln, leaving Evie hovering in the background.
"Yes, Sprocket." The alien grinned. "And I am Toroque'que of the Hailm."
"We're calling him Torque for short," Captain Briggs said, a smile dominating his face. He was reveling in every part of this even if everyone else around him was less sure about it. "Torque, this is Safa. She's our doctor and head scientist." Evie had never heard Safa described that way, but perhaps the title was meant as a simpler way to explain the roles of those on board. "This is Lincoln, our pilot. And behind him is Evie, she's a passenger on our ship. And that's all of us."
Evie wouldn't have thought it possible, but Torque's smile only broadened, past what would have been possible on a human face. "A pilot! I have always wanted to fly a ship myself. But they do not make many vessels that are suited to the Hailm."
When Lincoln didn't respond right away, the alien's smile dropped slightly. "Have I said something to offend?"
"No," the captain said at once, signing to Lincoln at the same time. "Apologies. In my excitement, I forgot to mention that Lincoln cannot hear us."
"Oh," Torque said, recognition dawning on his face. "My companion is the same!" He turned and gestured toward the woman still standing behind him who seemed mostly disinterested in the exchange going on without her. "Her species does not hear, but understand one another with their minds. Most species could communicate with one another using the Haphzha chip, but both participants must speak verbally for it to work." The alien tilted his long neck, pointing to a spot near the base of his back. "I believe she understands some of what I say, perhaps through thought, but not all. We have had some simple conversations through drawing, but there is much I still don't understand."
"How long have you known one another?" Evie asked.
"My ship was damaged perhaps forty-nine days ago, after we had been in this strange place for only four. At first there were others, including the knick that must have been someone's pet before, but I had been alone for six days when her escape pod arrived. We have been coexisting in the remaining habitable parts of my home ever since."
"You lived on board that—" Safa said, not finishing her sentence.
"Ship. Yes, with my family. Before it had been brought here, it had not moved in many years as we had access to everything we needed either onboard or on the planet we orbited."
There was no longer any trace of a smile on Torque’s face. If he'd lived on board with his family, and everyone else was dead now … Evie didn't want to think about it, and no one else asked for him to elaborate either.
"Why don't we get out of this hallway?" Captain Biggs asked, forcing a smile of his own. "We have more space in the decks above, and I think we'll all be more comfortable."
"To get to know one another!" Torque popped his feet up and down in quick succession, giving off a noise that wasn't entirely dissimilar to clapping. "Please excuse. It has been a long time since I have had others to speak with. This has been my best day in some time."
Strange. It was this man's best day, and yet probably the worst of anyone on board. Torque had said he'd been stuck here for days already before his ship had been damaged. And if a race of people so much more advanced than the humans hadn't found their way out of the void, what chance did they have?
For as long as Evie could remember, she and everyone who knew her had always imagined her having a big, adventurous life. She was one of the Casseract heirs, she had every opportunity and was intelligent enough to make the most of them. She could have done anything she'd ever wanted to and this was where she was going to die, among strangers and aliens.
Their ragtag group climbed up through the stairwell in silence, Evie wishing she could turn to see how the Hailm man maneuvered through a space not built to accommodate his shape, but dutifully keeping her eyes on the captain's back instead.
Evie had assumed they were headed up to the bridge, but instead they stopped after only one flight of stairs, entering the third level of the Lexiconis before Oliver led the group through the closest open door. It was a room Evie hadn't seen before, built like one of the many boardrooms she'd visited her father in as a child, with none of the modern elegance. This room was built for function, not style, but could easily fit all eight of the people now on board.
Evie sat beside the woman whose name no one on board knew before the furry little animal hopped right up on her lap. Evie shrieked, her whole body tensing up as she waited to see what the creature would do next before flushing with embarrassment when she wasn't brutally attacked. The creature only stared at her with unlidded eyes, tilting its head slightly.
"It is harmless," Torque said, assuring her from across the table. "He has been lucky that there has always been enough food that there was no harm in keeping him along. I have never been one for companions, but his company has perhaps helped keep me sane."
"I like him," Sprocket said across the table. And Evie had to admit that despite her racing heart, she did think he was cute, even if she wasn't yet brave enough to try stroking its fur.
"As much as I would like to spend more time … getting to know one another," Captain Briggs said, drawing the attention of everyone in the r
oom, "I suppose we should come up with a plan first, to try to figure out where we should go next. Did your ship have any time to navigate this area before you were attacked. Is there somewhere we could go that might be able to help?"
While the captain had started out sounding so sure of himself, so in command, his voice faltered at the end, doubtless realizing how unlikely it was that their new alien friend had access to any kind of help.
"I do not understand," Torque said, his bushy eyebrows, a darker gray than the rest of his body, pressing together to form one solid line. "We couldn’t move at all since our arrival here. There was no exploration, no help. Only waiting. I believe my companion's ship saw the same fate. The only vessels I have seen moving here are the ones that attacked us."
"We have moved but we took a lot of damage when we arrived," the captain said. "We can't move very quickly, and so far, we haven't found anything but your ship and one other, also destroyed."
Torque's expression perked up at once. "Then we can leave! If we can repair your engine so you can once again travel among the stars, we could all go home."
"If only it were that simple, my friend," Oliver said.
Sprocket spoke at the same time. "Travel among the stars? Do you mean move faster than light?" he asked, his face lighting up to look like the man Evie had met for the first time since his ship had arrived in the void.
"Yes, of course," Torque said, focusing on Sprocket.
"We haven't figured out how to travel at those speeds yet," the engineer said wistfully. "We've tried, but so far, we've been limited to moving in our own system, at least until we were brought here."
"Perhaps that is why you can still move when other, more powerful ships cannot."
Sprocket's eyebrows quirked up slightly, but no one argued. This was all very interesting, groundbreaking even, but Evie couldn't imagine how any of this might be helpful to any of them. They were still stuck, there was still nowhere to go.
Maybe the Lexiconis could make it for a while in this place, never going home but surviving all the same. But so far no one had brought up exactly who had attacked Torque's ship and if there was any chance of them coming back.
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