'Shall I fire up the preflight checklist?' Uncle Virge prompted.
Jack let the 'nocs fall to his side. 'Sure,' he said, turning and trudging back up the ramp. 'Let's go take a look.'
Chapter 3
Commander Chayd did his best, as did all the remaining Shontine and K'da. But the Havenseeker was too big, its control areas too widely scattered.
In the end, there really was no hope.
Draycos regained consciousness slowly, to find himself lying beneath the nav bubble's control board. He was curled up tightly with his back to the bulkhead like a K'da cub trying to keep warm on a cold night, a mound of broken tiles and shattered equipment pressed against him. The descent through the atmosphere—the heat and buffeting, the tension and Chayd's calm orders—was etched on his mind like the brilliant sunlight of morning. But the crash itself was only a vague memory of noise and chaos, of being thrown violently about as the ship's hull crumpled beneath him and the nav bubble shattered above him.
For that matter, he couldn't even remember leaving the relative safety of Polphir's back and becoming fully three-dimensional again.
He had no idea how long he'd been lying there. Long enough for what was left of the Havenseeker to grind its way to a halt, apparently, because all was now silence and stillness. On the other hand, the cloud of dust that still hung thick in the air around him showed that the ship hadn't been down for very long, either. An hour, perhaps. Maybe less.
Carefully, trying not to choke on the dust, he took a deep breath, concentrating on the feel of the muscles and bones in his torso as his chest expanded. There were a few aches and pains, but nothing that indicated anything more serious than bruises and a few cracked scales through which blood was slowly oozing. He tried his legs next, carefully moving and twisting each in turn. The middle joint of his left rear leg jolted him with a brief stab of pain, but after a little experimentation he concluded it was only a mild sprain. He catalogued a few more bruises and cracked scales on various limbs, then moved on to his neck and tail. Again, he found nothing serious.
Pushing away the collected debris hemming him in, he worked his way out from under the control panel. Polphir was nowhere to be seen, the chair he'd been strapped to apparently torn straight off the deck. Wincing as shards of plastic and metal crunched under his paws, Draycos walked gingerly to the edge of the bubble floor and looked down to the main deck.
There, lying amid the rubble, was Polphir.
Draycos's injured leg and the uncertain footing on the main deck would make a standard K'da leap risky at best. Fortunately, the ladder he'd climbed up earlier was still in place, though hanging precariously by a single connector. Climbing down as quickly as he could, he crunched through more plastic and metal to Polphir's side.
The Shontin was dead.
Draycos would not remember afterward how long he crouched there, sifting quietly through his memories and saying his silent farewells. He thought back to their first meeting, after Draycos's host had died, and to those first few tentative months as symbionts. He had missed Trachan terribly, and only much later did he learn that his surly attitude had nearly persuaded Polphir to turn him over to someone else instead.
But the Shontin had been patient, and Draycos had managed to grow up a little. In the end, they had worked things out.
It had been lucky for Draycos that they had. At least twice in their time together it had been only Polphir's quick thinking in the face of danger that had kept the two of them alive.
But it hadn't all been merely experience and quick thinking. Polphir had had a fierce loyalty to his symbiont, a loyalty he'd demonstrated at the Battle of Conkren when he'd deliberately put his own life on the line for his friend. Draycos still shuddered at that memory, and still marveled at the miracle that had gotten both of them out alive.
Now Polphir was gone. And Draycos had been powerless to save him.
Or even to properly mourn him. He and Polphir had been together for over ten years, as companions, symbionts, and fellow warriors. A proper farewell to such a relationship could not be accomplished in less than a week, nor without all of Polphir's close family and friends on hand to weave their own memories into the great tapestry that would close off his life.
But what remained of Polphir's close family was a long ways away. Most of his friends lay dead around him here on the Havenseeker's deck.
And Draycos certainly did not have a week for a proper mourning. In fact, unless he could find another host, his own life could be counted now in hours.
'Steady, K'da warrior,' he said aloud to himself. His voice was startlingly loud in the silence, the words echoing oddly from the new contours and gaps the crash had created. 'Rule One: assess the complete situation before coming to unpleasant conclusions.'
As a pep talk, it was a dismal failure. As good military advice, though, it made sense. Picking his way through the debris, favoring his injured leg a little, he began to search the ship.
It was an unpleasant duty. The Havenseeker's bow was completely crushed and buried, the few Shontine who had been up there apparently buried with it. Those who had been below him in the control complex had also died in the crash. From the control complex aft, the ship was clogged with debris but otherwise relatively undamaged, and for awhile Draycos dared to hope that their attackers' sweep with the Death might have missed someone.
But no. They had done an efficient job of it, leaving nothing behind but Shontine bodies. Some lay where they had fallen, most where the crash had sent them sliding. The K'da bodies, of course, were long gone. Slowly, his head held low, Draycos turned and headed back forward to the control complex. It was, he thought more than once along the way, worse than any battlefield from which he had ever faced the Valahgua. On battlefields, at least, there were always a few survivors. Here, there was no one but him.
But he would be joining the rest of them soon enough. He had survived an attack with the Death, and even made it through a ship crash. But he could not survive for long without a host. Another two hours, perhaps, and he would fade into a two-dimensional shadow and disappear forever into nothingness.
Still, he had those two hours. He might as well put them to use.
