Prophets

“Lifeboats?” Hussein asked the captain. “Can we intercept them?”

Captain Rasheed ordered the lifeboats highlighted on the main screen. Six red dotted trails sprang up between the Eclipse and the planet. He stared at the display a moment, as velocity and bearings started to appear next to the six contacts. “No, we can’t ready an intercept craft and get it there before they reach the planet.”

Admiral Hussein rubbed his temple. “The ship itself, can we intercept it?”

The captain nodded, “If we launch a salvage team within the next thirty minutes, we might reach them in two hours.”

“Do it.”

The captain ordered a pair of ships, the Jeddah and the Jizan, to launch on an intercept course. The Jizan was an engineering vessel, capable of repairs and salvage. The Jeddah was a fully-armed drop- ship capable of planetside engagements.

Within half an hour, the tactical display showed a pair of green triangles departing from the Voice and speeding toward the new ship.

Date: 2526.6.3 (Standard) 750,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534

In the hours since the engines failed, the bridge slowly filled with floating debris as Mosasa and Tsoravitch pulled out burned-out components from the panels around the bridge. Parvi wasn’t remotely technical, and until they resurrected something she could fly, she was relegated to watching the other three work on the electronics of the bridge in relative silence, retrieving any segments of cable, broken fragments of plastic insulation, or discolored circuits as they floated by. She stashed the debris in a mesh bag so they didn’t float into something important and cause them worse problems.

As if things could get worse.

Despite the best efforts from Mosasa and Tsoravitch to contain the stuff, every few minutes, Parvi had to grab some migrating fragment of flayed electronics. She was in the midst of bagging a fragment of optical cable that had gotten caught in her ponytail when Wahid shouted “I got contact with Bill!”

Parvi pulled herself upright. “Is he okay?”

Over the PA system, Bill’s synthetic human voice spoke. “I find myself and my support systems unharmed.”

Mosasa turned around. His dragon tattoo seemed particularly sinister in the dim emergency lighting. “What the hell happened to my ship?”

“An unprecedented surge in the engines,” Bill said. “It is unique in my experience, but the energy surge was exponentially higher than expected for normal tach-drive interference.”

“Did you see what the fuck happened to that drive?” Wahid said.

“I salvaged the data. And I have detected something I believe is important.”

Mosasa floated up and grabbed the console next to the navigator’s station, bringing himself to a stop. “What?” he asked.

“I have connected to an external camera array. I will patch the images up to you. Can you see the data?”

“I’ve got it, Bill.” Wahid said.

As Wahid connected Bill’s data to the main holo display, Tsoravitch floated up next to Parvi.

The holo shimmered and stabilized into a view of a star field that, at first, looked unremarkable.

“Well, what the hell? Look at that.” Wahid broke out in a grin. “Look at that!”

In a moment, Parvi could tell why Wahid was grinning. Centered in the image, barely visible, was a pair of spacecraft. As she watched, they got noticeably larger.