CHAPTER 14

Pod

Concepcion stood at the holotable at the helm, watching one of the PKs cut through the wreckage of the Italian ship. The miners outside were sending her live video to the holospace in front of her. Everyone who worked at the helm was gathered around Concepcion, their faces taut with worry. For her part, Concepcion did her best to appear poised and in command, though inside she felt tense and helpless. Whittling down the wreckage with a laser was taking an incredible risk. If the wreckage were to shift or rotate unexpectedly while they were cutting, even only slightly, the laser might cut into the room where the survivors were waiting, breaching the airtight walls and killing everyone inside within moments.

Concepcion shuddered at the thought. It would be a cruel death, made all the more horrible because the people trapped inside now believed they were being rescued. Right as we fill their hearts with hope, we screw up and give them a death more terrible and traumatic than what they would have suffered had we never come along.

But no, the wreckage wouldn’t shift, she told herself. The miners were taking every precaution. They had set up mooring cables and two long pylons that extended from El Cavador out to the wreckage, holding the wreckage in place and preventing it from drifting into the ship. It was a precarious procedure, yes, but they were doing everything they could to protect those inside.

The laser finished a cut, and the severed section of wreckage broke free and drifted away. There was an audible sigh of relief from the crew, and a few of them even applauded and embraced one another. Concepcion remained still and unresponsive. The job was nowhere close to being finished, and she had learned through sad experience never to celebrate prematurely. They were not out of danger yet. Whatever had done this to the Italians was still out there.

The laser beam stopped cutting. The miners turned on the winches and pulled on the mooring cables, rotating the wreckage into a different position in preparation for a second cut. Since the wreckage was unstable and had lifelines attached and people inside, the miners didn’t rush the process. They rotated the wreckage slowly, being careful not to jerk any of the lines. It made Concepcion realize how tedious and lengthy a process this would be: cutting and rotating and cutting and rotating until they had whittled down the structure small enough to fit inside the airlock.

It relieved her to know that Victor and Segundo and Toron were out there somewhere continuing the search. The work with the laser drill hadn’t put a full stop on the rescue efforts.

Of course, sending the three out in the quickship didn’t exactly put her mind at ease either. Under any other circumstances she wouldn’t have taken such a risk, especially with the only two mechanics in the crew. If something happened to both of them, who would keep the ship operational? Not Mono. He was too young, too inexperienced. He had barely had enough time to learn the fundamentals, if that. I should have considered that before blessing the mission, she thought. That had been careless. But what could she have done? Only Victor could fly the quickship, and Segundo wouldn’t have let him go without accompanying him.

The laser started cutting again.

Concepcion watched a moment, then her handheld vibrated. She put it to her ear and answered it.

Edimar’s voice was rushed and panicked. “It’s coming back,” she said. “The pod. It’s already close and moving fast. We have about twenty-eight minutes before it reaches the debris cloud.”

Concepcion leaped forward to the holotable and swiped her hand through the holospace. The video feeds disappeared. “Show me,” she said.

The people around her recoiled, sensing her alarm. “What is it?” asked Selmo.

A system chart with dots of light appeared in the holospace. One light was marked EL CAVADOR. Other smaller dots of light immediately around the ship represented debris. Concepcion ignored those and focused instead on a distant dot of light off to the side, alone out in space. As she watched, a computer-rendered line representing the ship’s trajectory extended from the dot across the holospace and landed directly on El Cavador.

The crew stared. They all knew what it meant.

“How much time do we have?” asked Selmo.

“Less than twenty-eight minutes,” said Concepcion.

“Everyone to stations,” said Selmo. “Move!”

Selmo stayed by her side while the crew hurried to their workstations. Dreo entered from the corridor and flew to the holotable, coming in from the crow’s nest. Concepcion spoke into the handheld. “Watch the pod’s progress, Edimar. If it changes speed or its trajectory notify me immediately.” She ended the call and turned to Dreo and Selmo. “What are our options?” she asked.

“Hard to say,” said Selmo. “We don’t know what we’re up against. We know next to nothing about this pod.”

“We know it destroyed the Italians,” said Dreo, “one of the best defended clans in the Belt. We know it’s lethal. We know the Italians’ death wasn’t an accident. The pod destroyed four ships, not just one. You can’t chalk that up as a mistake. It wiped them out. This was an intentional kill.”

“Agreed,” said Selmo. “But we don’t know if it considers us a threat as well.”

“It’s heading straight for us,” said Dreo. “It’s not coming here to play a hand of cards. It likely thinks we’re part of the Italians. And for whatever reason it considered the Italians a threat. We don’t know why, but it’s probably safe to assume that the Italians didn’t provoke it. That would be foolish. The Italians wouldn’t endanger themselves. They’d play it cautiously. Which would suggest that this thing killed them indiscriminately. But in my mind that isn’t even the question we need to answer. The ‘why’ is irrelevant right now. We need to know the ‘how.’ How did it wipe them out? What are its weapons capabilities? Can it attack from long range? Are we already within its reach? Consider the debris. The pieces of wreckage aren’t clean cut. The edges aren’t straight. This doesn’t look like laser work. It looks like explosions, like something ripped the ships apart. How did it do that? And more importantly how do we defend against it?”

“Maybe we can’t,” said Selmo. “Unless the pod attacked and destroyed the Italians incredibly fast, the Italians would have fired back. They would have given the pod everything they had. Yet their weapons, which are much stronger than ours, apparently had little to no effect on this thing. What makes us think we can take it down when the Italians couldn’t?”

“Then what do you suggest?” asked Dreo. “We can’t run. The pod’s too fast. It would catch us easily. Plus running only makes it harder to defend ourselves or to hit it with the lasers.”

“If the pod thinks we’re with the Italians,” said Selmo, “if we’re an enemy by association, then perhaps we should move out of the debris cloud. If we distance ourselves from this place, the pod might disassociate us from the Italians and leave us alone.”

“If we move out of the cloud, we’ll be exposed,” said Concepcion. “The debris is the best defense we have right now. It provides some cover and it likely throws off the pod’s sensors.”

“If it even has sensors,” said Dreo.

“Point taken,” said Concepcion. “We need information about this pod, and the only people who can provide it are the survivors inside the wreckage.” She punched a command into her handheld and called Bahzim, who was supervising the effort outside. When he answered, she told him the situation and asked if there was any way to speak with the survivors.

“The only way to communicate with them is by light board,” said Bahzim. “We write, and they give simple responses, nodding their head or writing words on the glass of the hatch one letter at a time.”

“We don’t have time for that,” said Dreo. “Look, these survivors are hindering our maneuverability. We won’t be able to move around the debris field quickly if we’re moored to a massive hunk of wreckage. They’re an albatross. I hate to be the one to say this, but we need to consider cutting them loose.”

“Absolutely not,” said Concepcion.

“We could come back and get them when it’s over,” said Dreo.

“They can’t survive without us,” said Selmo. “We’re supplying them with oxygen.”

“Think,” said Dreo. “These are nine total strangers. Are we willing to handicap ourselves and risk everything for people we don’t know?”

“They’re not strangers,” said Concepcion. “The moment we started helping them they became a part of this crew. End of discussion. Selmo, have the miners remove the pylons and pull the wreckage in close with the mooring cables. That will give us more mobility. Dreo, contact the quickship. Get Victor and Segundo and Toron back here immediately.”

Dreo hesitated, as if he would argue further, then went to his workstation.

Concepcion turned to Selmo. “We need a better defensive position. I want us behind a large chunk of debris if there is one. Then put our best men on our five pebble-killers.”

“That may not be enough,” said Selmo.

“It’s going to have to be,” said Concepcion.


Victor floated in the quickship, watching the large, twisted piece of wreckage beside him. An hour had passed since Father and Toron had gone inside through the hatch, and Victor was on the verge of flying to the wreck to investigate. Just as he began unspooling cable to produce a makeshift safety line, a voice crackled over the radio.

“Quickship, this is El Cavador. If you can hear us, respond. Repeat. Victor, Toron, Segundo, if you can hear us, respond.”

Victor dropped the cable. El Cavador was using radio, which meant one of two things. Either the ship had determined that radio wasn’t what had attracted the pod, or the pod was no longer a threat. A different voice sounded in Victor’s helmet. “El Cavador, this is Segundo, we copy. Over.”

Victor relaxed. It was Father. He didn’t sound injured.

“Toron here as well,” said Toron.

Victor swallowed, composing himself. “And Victor. I’m here, too. Over.”

“Get back to the ship immediately,” said Dreo. “The pod’s coming back.”

Victor’s relief at hearing Father’s voice was gone in an instant. They weren’t prepared for the pod; they had five pebble-killers. The Italians had been armed with as many as twenty-five, and the pod had wasted them. Father began asking questions, and Dreo shared what he knew.

“We can’t come back immediately,” said Father. “Toron and I are still inside one of the wrecks. We’re moving back to the quickship now, but it will be ten minutes before we reach it. We won’t get back to you in time. Don’t wait for us. If you need to run or move elsewhere, do it now. We’ll catch up to you later if we can.”

“Concepcion won’t like that,” said Dreo.

“She doesn’t have much choice,” said Father.

El Cavador clicked off. Victor hit his talkback: If the ship had abandoned radio silence, there was no need for him to adhere to it now. “Father, what happened?”

Father sounded solemn. “We found Faron shortly after we came inside. He was dead. There were a lot of people in this one, Vico. None of them made it. We had to cut through some heavy debris in one of the corridors to reach the rear of the wreck. We knew it would take a while, but we went for it anyway. It didn’t pay off.”

Victor said nothing. Faron. Dead. Here inside this wreck. That meant this was Vesuvio, Janda’s ship; it meant that if they were going to find Janda, it would likely be here. Faron would have stayed close to her; he would have protected her. Yet Father and Toron hadn’t found her; Father would have said so if they had.

They weren’t going to find her, Victor realized. Ever. It had been an unlikely possibility from the beginning, but Victor had still clung to hope. Now that lingering chance was gone. Alejandra was dead. Nine survivors was more of a miracle than they could have hoped for.

Father and Toron emerged from the hatch. They deflated the bubble and flew back up to the quickship. Toron looked vacant as he climbed back into the cockpit. Victor watched him, seeing that Toron had reached the same conclusion he had: Janda was gone.

Concepcion’s voice came over the radio. “We’ve moved to a more defensive position, but don’t come to us if you have enough air. The pod is nearly here, and you may be safer where you are. We’ve managed to get a communication line to the survivors, and we’ve learned more about what we’re up against. The survivors believe the pod is drawn to heat. It stopped at their position and sat there for hours doing nothing. The Italians tried communicating with it, but the pod was nonresponsive. Then, without provocation, it flew to the rear of one of their ships, clung to it with grappling arms, and began probing the ship’s engines with long, thin drills, like needles almost. The drills went in like a ‘knife through hot butter,’ they said, hardly any resistance at all. The pod was systematic about it, as if looking for something. The first ship blew up before anyone knew what was happening. At first the Italians thought the pod had planted an explosive, but it appears the probing of the engines is what caused the detonation. That’s why the debris looks ripped apart. It blew up from within. As for the pod, it sustained no visible damage. Not even the needle drills. The other ships fired their lasers, but the pod moved quickly to the engines of the second ship and repeated the process. The pod took several direct hits, but again, no damage. Either it’s shielded or its hull is impermeable to lasers. It might not attack us, but if it does, we’ll destroy it. Bahzim has a team of miners already outside with penetrating tools. If it lands on our engines, we’ll rip it to shreds.”

“Did it have any other weapons?” asked Father.

“None that the Italians could detect. Just the probing needle drills. It’s also much smaller than we thought. Maybe a quarter the size of El Cavador. The Italians believe it’s designed for atmospheric entry and exit, though probably not in really strong gravity, by the looks of its engines and design. It could land on and leave from, say, Earth, but it might have trouble with Jupiter. That’s conjecture, though, and not necessarily helpful.”

“Anything is helpful,” said Father. He quickly gave her his own report and informed her that they had found Faron’s body but no survivors.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” said Concepcion. “Once we destroy the pod and make needed repairs, if any, we’ll resume the search. In the meantime, hold your position. If you don’t hear from us afterward, come to us. We may not be able to contact you, and we’ll likely need you for repairs.” She paused a moment, then added, “Que Dios les proteja.” May God protect you.

“Y ustedes tambien,” said Father. And you as well.

The radio went silent, and no one spoke for a moment.

“She doesn’t think they’ll survive an attack, does she?” Victor asked.

“I don’t think so, no,” said Father. “And she has every reason to believe so. The Italians tried to stop it and couldn’t. It got all four of their ships, and they all were desperately fighting to the end.”

“El Cavador doesn’t have a chance,” said Toron. “This thing took laser fire. Direct hits. We can’t let it reach the ship.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Father.

“Bahzim has a team outside with penetrating tools. We have the same tools here. Spreaders, shears, cold sprayers. We’re closer to the pod than they are. It will be coming from this direction. When it passes, we get behind it and attack it from the rear. We’ll have to come in slightly from the side to avoid its thrusters, but we hit its hull, climb out, anchor ourselves to whatever we can, and destroy anything that moves with the tools. Maybe we can disable these grappling arms or needle drills. If we cripple it enough, it can’t inflict any damage.”

“It’s going to be moving,” said Father. “If we’re off on our approach, even slightly, we’ll miss it.” He turned to Victor. “You only just learned to fly this thing, Vico. Can you do this? Can we hit it?”

Victor blinked. They were going to attack the pod. Alone. With rescue gear. “I’d need to make some adjustments to the program to give us more propulsion; we can’t match it with our current speed. We’ll need to be much faster. But even then, I won’t have a guidance system. It will be like shooting a bow, with us as the arrow. If I track it right, and judge our speed right, it might work. But it will largely be guesswork. The challenge will be securing ourselves to the hull once we reach it. How do we anchor? We’ll need to cling to the hull long enough to get out of the ship with tools.”

“Leave that to me,” said Father. “You worry about getting us into a position to attack.” He clicked on the radio. “El Cavador, this is Segundo. Give me the exact location, trajectory, and speed of the pod based on our current position.”

“What are you planning?” asked Concepcion.

“A bit of sabotage,” said Father. “We might be able to do some damage before it reaches you. And don’t argue with us. You know it makes tactical sense, and we’re doing it whether you approve or not. We’ll simply have a better chance of success if you help.”

After a pause, Concepcion answered, “Selmo will give you the coordinates. Be careful, Segundo. I need my two best mechanics and my sky scanner alive.”

“You need everyone on board El Cavador alive,” said Father.

Selmo gave them the coordinates. The numbers meant little to Victor. But for Toron, a sky scanner, the coordinates were a second language he spoke fluently. Even without instruments, using only the placement of stars around them, Toron knew precisely where the pod would be coming from. He gave directions to Victor, who turned the quickship around and flew them through the debris, weaving this way and that until Toron felt certain about their position. Victor fired the retros and settled in a patch of shadow behind a large piece of debris.

“He’ll be coming right through here,” said Toron, making a sweeping gesture with his arm, showing them the expected trajectory.

Victor rotated the quickship so it was pointed in the direction to intercept the pod once it passed. Toron gazed outward with his visor zoomed to maximum, searching the sky for the pod, waiting. Father worked furiously behind Victor, making hooks for the cables. Using the shears, he snipped bars from the quickship’s walls and bent them with another hydraulic tool, jury-rigging a hook.

A few minutes later Toron saw it.

“There,” he said, pointing.

Victor strained his eyes and zoomed in with his visor. At first he saw nothing. There was wreckage clouding his view, and the sunlight through the debris was dim and heavily dappled with long shadows that kept most of their surroundings in near darkness.

Then he saw it. Or at least a glimpse of it, there in the distance, behind a scattering of debris, moving toward them.

Then the debris thinned, and the whole pod came into view. Victor’s heart sank. It was a ship, yes, but with its grappling hooks and needle drills already extended, it looked more like a smooth-shelled insect. It wasn’t human. Whatever was inside it piloting it couldn’t be human. It wasn’t shaped for humans. It seemed too narrow in the body. And what was that on the nose of the ship? A drive? For the first time in Victor’s memory, he was mechanically stumped. Typically he could look at other ships and know just by the shape of them and the placement of their sensors and engines how the ship flew and operated. Even ships he had not read about and whose designs were completely foreign to him, even those Victor could understand if he looked at them long enough.

Except this one. This was like nothing he had ever seen before. Had it not been flying through space in front of him, if he had seen only an image of it on the nets, he wouldn’t have believed it was a ship at all. He wouldn’t have believed it even existed.

El Cavador can’t stop it, Victor realized. Concepcion isn’t prepared for this. Nothing is prepared for this.

“What the devil is that?” said Toron.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Father. “We don’t have to understand it. We just have to stop it. Check your safety harnesses. Make sure your cables are secure. If you’re not tethered and you slip, you’re gone. The ship will be moving. Use your hand and boot magnets. Strap a second pair of magnets to your knees. Stay as flat as you can. Crawl, don’t walk. Toron, once we land, bring out the tools. We’ll target the needle drills and grappling arms first.” Father reached up and turned on his helmet cam. He was going to record everything. “You can do this, Vico,” he said. “Wait for the pod to pass. Then pull up alongside it and land on its surface.”

Yes, thought Victor. Land on its surface. How simple. Just plop a quickship-which was never intended to be piloted, never intended to hold people at all, and operated with rudimentary flight controls-onto a moving alien target. Easy.

Victor watched the pod approach. It decelerated as it sunk into the debris cloud, yet it still moved faster than Victor thought safe for a debris field. It must be incredibly nimble, he thought. It must be able to shift direction quickly. And just as he considered this, it happened. The pod jinked and spun to avoid a chunk of debris and then returned to its previous trajectory with inhuman agility. Again, like a flying insect, zipping to the side and back with ease. How was he supposed to land on something that could change direction that fast?

Ten seconds passed. The pod drew closer, getting larger. For a harrowing moment, Victor thought it was coming directly for them, that it had seen them moving through the debris and decided to attack them instead. But no, now it slowly began to veer to the side. They were beside its trajectory, not on it.

Finally it passed by, not a hundred meters from their position, slick and smooth and moving fast.

Victor slid his finger down the screen of his handheld, and the quickship shot forward. Earlier he had devised a dial to increase the propulsion by simply sliding his finger across the screen, but as soon as the ship took off, he knew that he had misjudged it: They were accelerating too quickly. He had intended to start slow and then rush at the end, but it was too late for that now. He would have to rely on retros to slow them down in the final moments just before impact.

The quickship raced forward, not aiming at the pod, but at a point in space ahead of it, where Victor hoped the two ships would meet. He had to hit it right, he knew. If he came late, they might fly up into the pod’s rear thrusters, burning themselves up in whatever heat or radiation was emitted there. Too early and they’d put themselves directly in the pod’s path, only to be crushed by the subsequent collision. It was the middle of the pod or nothing. And not at too sharp an angle either or they’d only bounce off or, worse, collide with such force that they’d kill themselves instantly.

Victor kept his eyes focused on the point of interception. The pod was to his right, slightly ahead of them. They were too fast, he realized. He was going to overshoot.

“We’re coming in hot,” he said. “Hold on to something.”

He fired up the retros to a quarter power. The straps across his chest tightened as he felt his body pressed forward in sudden deceleration. Then just when he thought he had slowed them enough, he released the retros, hit the propulsion, and they shot forward again. Victor waited one more moment then killed the propulsion. Now they were in a fast dead drift, closing in on the ship.

Three more seconds. Then two. One.

The impact was hard, and Victor’s body jerked against the straps. He hit the propulsion again to keep them from bouncing off, but he could already feel the ship deflecting away. He saw Father’s body fly by, and for an instant Victor thought Father had been thrown from the ship. But no, Father had launched forward, using the speed and force of the impact to get clear of the quickship, and hurled himself onto the pod. Two cables uncoiled behind him, and Father raised the hook in his hand. He hit the surface of the pod and snapped the hook around the base of one of the long grappling arms. His body flipped around, still full of momentum; and it would have flown off into space if not for the cable attached to his safety harness, which snapped taut and whipped him back to the surface of the pod.

The cable attached to the hook snapped taut next, and the quickship swung back to the pod like a pendulum, slamming hard against the side of the pod. For a moment, Victor felt dazed and disoriented, then he tore at his restraints, pulling himself free, crawling out. He set his boot magnets to the hull and was relieved to feel them attracted to the metal. Toron was right behind him, magnet pads in his hands, crawling out onto the pod with two hydraulic shears strapped across his back.

Victor grabbed the heat extractor, and crawled forward. Toron was right beside him. Debris whipped by overhead. They reached Father. Toron handed Father one of the shears, and Father immediately went to work, firing up the hydraulics. They had aimed for the drills, but Father was attached to a grappling arm, and he set the shears to work there first. The teeth bit at the metal but they didn’t sink in. He tried again, setting the teeth at a different angle, but again to no effect.

“I can’t bite through,” said Father. “The metal’s impermeable.”

“What do we do?” said Toron.

“Vico, get the heat extractor here at the base of this grappling arm,” said Father. “We’ll suck the heat off of it. Freezing it will make it brittle.”

Victor moved quickly, attaching the claw of the heat extractor around the narrow grappling arm. Then he watched the meter as the heat of the arm quickly dropped.

After ten seconds, Father said, “Good enough. Take it off.”

Victor snapped the claw free, and pulled the extractor away. Father was instantly at the frozen spot with the shears again. This time the shears bit through, but instead of tearing, the metal cracked, splintered, and then shattered. The entire grappling arm snapped free and hovered there in space a moment before Father pushed it away from the ship.

One arm down. Three to go. Plus the drills.

“That one next,” said Father, indicating the grappling arm two meters to their right. Victor began crawling for it, following Father, sliding his knee magnets across the smooth surface, keeping himself low and his grip on the pod secure. A flicker of movement in his peripheral vision stopped him. He turned toward the nose of the pod and saw a hatch open. A figure emerged wearing a pressure suit and helmet. It wasn’t human. It was three-quarters the size of a human, with a double set of arms and a pair of legs. All six appendages stuck to the surface as the creature shuffle-crawled forward with incredible speed, racing toward them, an air hose trailing behind it.

Victor couldn’t move. His whole body was rigid with fear.

The thing paused, lifted its head, and regarded them. Victor saw its face then. It wasn’t an insect exactly-there was skin and fur and musculature. But it was antlike. Large black eyes. Small mouth, with pincers and protuberances like teeth. Two superciliary antennae that bent downward across its face.

“Son hormigas,” said Toron. They’re ants.

The creature moved its head, eyeing their equipment. Then, seeing that Victor had the largest piece, the heat extractor, and perhaps the most threatening, the hormiga shot forward toward Victor with its first set of arms raised.

Victor cried out. And just before the arms seized him, the blunt end of a pair of shears struck the hormiga on the side of the head, knocking it away. It was Toron. “Help your father! I’ll hold it back.”

The creature slid away and then tumbled off the ship, spinning into space. Its air hose snapped taut and held firm, however, and as soon as the hormiga got its bearings, it shimmied up the hose like it was climbing a pole and was back on the surface of the pod. Toron hurried to the hose and severed it with a quick snip of the shears. Air poured from the hose, and the creature lunged at Toron, pinning him to the surface.

Victor moved to intercede, but Father was quicker, crawling past him and lunging at the creature. “Get the extractor on that grappling arm,” Father yelled. “Now!”

Victor moved for the arm and snapped the claw around the base of it. He cranked the setting up to maximum and pulled out as much heat as he could. He looked back to Father and Toron and saw that the creature was gone, knocked off the ship by one of them. Toron was on his back, his knee magnets turned around to the back of his legs, holding his lower body against the hull. Father was kneeling over him, clinging to the stomach of Toron’s suit.

“Victor. Help me,” said Father.

Victor hurried over and saw at once that Toron was badly wounded. The front of Toron’s suit over his abdomen was ripped and bloody. Father was trying desperately to hold the punctured suit closed. Toron was coughing up blood into his helmet, and his eyes weren’t focused.

“What do I do?” said Victor.

“We need to seal the suit,” said Father. “Hurry.”

Victor tore at his hip pouch for the tape.

Every suit had a fail-safe system inside it in case of a puncture: Straps would tighten and rings of airtight foam would inflate inside the suit to seal off the punctured area and prevent an oxygen leak. Without these emergency sealants, you’d quickly lose all air pressure and die in fifteen to thirty seconds. The problem was, the seals were never perfect. Air always seeped out, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but air always found a way. If anything, the sealants were designed to give you a few extra minutes at most to get back inside the ship before you asphyxiated or your body fluids began to boil. Tape could help seal the puncture if the hole was small enough, but it wasn’t the golden solution, especially on a puncture as big as Toron’s.

Victor found the tape and hit the mechanism on the side to eject a foot-long strip of adhesive.

“Put it here,” said Father, “where my fingers are. Hurry.”

The suit was red and wet, and the tape wasn’t sticking because of the fluid.

“We have to stop the bleeding first,” said Victor. “We have to put pressure on the wound.”

“He’s losing air,” said Father.

“He’ll bleed to death if we seal the suit,” said Victor.

A hand grabbed Victor’s arm. It was Toron, looking up at him. “You find my daughter. You keep looking. You make sure I don’t die in vain.”

“You’re not going to die. We’re going to get you back,” said Victor, though he knew it wasn’t true.

Toron tried to smile. “Don’t think so.”

“Put your hand on the wound and hold it there,” Father said to Victor. “I’ll try to seal your hand inside the suit.”

Toron turned his head to Father. “Always trying to fix things, eh, cousin? This one’s even beyond you.” He coughed again, and winced, then gasped from the pain of it. Father held his hand. The pain passed, and when Toron spoke again his voice was strained and weak. “Save the ship. Save Lola and Edimar. Promise me that.”

“I promise,” said Father.

“I was hard on Edimar. I was a bad father.”

“Stop talking,” said Father gently.

Toron winced again.

Father handed Victor the shears. “Cut the grappling arm.”

Victor hesitated. He didn’t want to leave Toron.

“Do it now, Vico,” said Father.

Victor moved, crawling across the surface. He pulled the claw of the heat extractor away. The metal was cracked and brittle. Victor turned on the shears, and the second grappling arm snapped away.

“Don’t stop,” said Father. “Take out one of the needle drills next. No matter what happens, keep going. Break off as much as you can.”

A second figure emerged from the hatch. Father had the other pair of shears in his hand. He rushed the creature, staying low, jabbing the shears forward. Victor reached the drill. It was narrower than the arm. He snapped the claw around it and waited for the heat extractor to do its work, sucking the heat away. Victor glanced to the side and saw Father fighting the creature. Father kept lunging with the shears, but the creature was easily swatting the attacks aside. If Victor didn’t help, the creature would soon get the upper hand.

Victor glanced back at the extractor. It was done. Victor quickly removed the claw and snipped with the shears. The drill snapped free, and Victor pushed it away before glancing again at Father. The creature was off the ship, dangling in space at the end of its hose, not moving, its body mangled from the shears. Father crawled forward and snipped the hose, severing the creature from the ship.

“Are you hurt?” asked Victor.

Father sounded winded. “No. Keep going.”

Victor went to the next drill. Froze it. Snipped it. Pushed it away.

They were approaching El Cavador. Victor could see it far ahead in the distance. Father was at the hatch, looking inside. It was a small hole, too narrow for his shoulders. “There’s another one inside,” he said.

Father reached in with the shears. There was a struggle. Father’s arms jerked right and left. The creature had incredible strength, and for a moment Victor feared that the magnets anchoring Father to the surface of the ship would break their hold and Father would be slung out into space.

But the magnets held, and Father continued to lunged downward, fierce and fast.

Finally the struggling stopped. Father exhaled, coughed, and sounded exhausted. “It’s dead,” he said. He shined a light down into the hole. “I think this is the cockpit. I don’t see any other way to get into this room except through this hatch. No doors. No access points. I think these three were the entire crew.”

Victor crawled toward him. “We have to stop it if we can. Do you see any controls?”

“I see a lot of levers and dials. And a few screens, but they only display images. There’s no data. No writing, no symbols, no instructions, nothing that suggests measurement or coordinates or directions. No language marks or symbols. Nothing. I wouldn’t know how to stop it.”

Victor reached him and looked inside. The creature was snipped in half, floating in the air, limp and oozing liquid. Victor averted his eyes, suddenly hit with a wave of nausea. He shined his light toward the flight console instead, which was a ring around the front window, filled with dozens of levers and switches.

“We need to widen this hole,” said Victor. “I’ll freeze it with the heat extractor. You cut behind me as I move around the circle.” He reached down and pinched the inner ring of the hatch with the claw of the heat extractor then slowly slid the claw along the inner ring. Father followed behind with the shears, cutting and cracking the metal away. They worked quickly, and when they were done, the hole was more than wide enough for the both of them to float inside. Victor pushed the creature aside with the claw of the heat extractor and flew down to the console. The levers varied in size and shape, but there was nothing to indicate their purpose. No markings, words, numbers, nothing. Some of the levers would no doubt be for the drill and grappling arm while others must be for the engines. But which ones? Victor looked around him, searching for clues. The room was large and filled with equipment. There were long tubes of smoky gases and odd-looking plants. The screens showed images of the Milky Way, the solar system, and a slightly blurry image of a planet.

“That’s Earth,” said Father.

Victor thought so, too. “Yet there’s no data,” said Victor. “No labeling, no markings of any kind. Just images. Are you recording all this?”

Father scanned the room. “Trying to.”

Victor focused his attention back on the console, searching for any symbols or markings that might suggest the purpose of any of the levers. It was useless, he realized. There was nothing to guide him.

“Trouble,” said Father, pointing.

Victor followed Father’s finger and looked out the window. The pod was heading toward a large piece of wreckage a kilometer or two ahead.

“We don’t know how to stop it,” said Father. “We need to bail.”

“Give me a second,” said Victor, reaching for one of the levers. He pulled back, and one of the grappling arms extended out in front of them.

“We don’t have time, Vico.”

“We need to save this ship, Father. There might be information here.”

The debris was approaching. The ship would collide in moments. Victor studied the levers. There were three other levers like the one he had tried. Those would all be grappling arms; not what he wanted.

“We need to go now,” said Father.

Victor tried another lever, and the ship accelerated slightly.

“Whoa,” said Father.

Victor pulled back in the other direction, and the ship slowed. But not enough.

“Pull it back more,” said Father.

“That’s as far as it goes.”

They were nearly on top of the debris. It was at least four times the size of the pod, with twisted beams and mangled steel protruding from every direction, all coming clearly into view fast. Father grabbed Victor’s hand. “Move. Now!”

Victor launched up through the hole and crawled out onto the hull. Father came up behind him. The shadow of the debris covered the pod. They were seconds from impact.

“We need to jump,” Father said. “Take off your line.”

Victor fumbled with the D-ring on his safety harness. His fingers slipped. He couldn’t get it lose.

Snip. The shears in Father’s hands cut the line. “Go!”

They launched upward. Victor looked back. The pod crashed into the debris below them. Beams from the debris pierced the cockpit window. Glass shattered and twinkled away into space. The quickship flew forward, spinning awkwardly, still tethered to the pod, and careened into the debris, bending, bouncing off, wrecked. Dust and tiny debris scattered in every direction, clouding the collision.

“El Cavador. El Cavador,” Father was saying. “Do you read? Over.”

The wreckage was getting smaller below them. They were still flying upward with the force and speed of their launch. They weren’t tethered to anything. They had nothing in hand to stop themselves. Father was off to Victor’s right, with the distance growing between them by the second. They had launched at slightly different angles, and now they were drifting farther apart. Unless El Cavador retrieved them immediately, they would fly in these directions at these speeds forever.

“El Cavador,” Father said again. “Can you read?”

There was a crackle over the line, then Concepcion’s voice said, “Segundo. We see you. We’re coming for you now.”

Victor looked back and saw El Cavador emerge from behind a section of debris.

“Get Vico first,” said Father.

“We’re getting you both,” said Concepcion.

Victor turned his head back to Father, who was a great distance away now, getting smaller by the moment.

“Toron didn’t make it,” said Father.

“We know,” said Concepcion.

The ship moved closer, pulling up beside him. A miner with a lifeline leaped out from the ship and wrapped his arms around Victor’s chest, stopping Victor’s flight. It was Bahzim.

“Got you, Vico.”

Victor clung to him as Bahzim thumbed his propulsion pack and turned them both back toward El Cavador. Down the side of the ship, a distance away, another of the miners was grabbing Father as well. Victor watched until he was certain Father was secured, then he turned his head and looked back at the wreckage now far below, where Toron was lost among the dust and debris.

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