“You need to hurry, Toomin.”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Yes. I just … it’s not right. I mean, they’re … Why would they …”
“Toomin, this isn’t the time.”
“They killed everyone!”
“I know, Toomin. But we don’t have time right now. Don’t think about that. Focus. It’s … it’s a game, Toomin. It’s a game and you’re Ellimist. Analyze. Don’t feel, it’s just a game.”
Yes. That’s what it was. A sim, not real. There had been no dagger-sharp ship. No pale red beam. No tornado of flechettes. A game. A problem.
I shook myself, loosened my painfully tight-gripped wings. There were controls. Physical fly-by-wire controls. Some would run the ship. Some would be for simple maintenance and environmental functions. Then there would be the weapons.
What could that symbol mean? Was it ship’s attitude? Probably. At least to my own Ketran sensibilities. Yaw. Roll. Attitude. Air speed? And beside those … yes, yes, those had to be flight controls. Thrust. Reverse thrust. Microthrusters.
Okay, then those long things, those jointed sticks, those were the weapons controls. It would require skill to fly and fight the ship simultaneously. Could I at least fly it?
Not well. But yes. Maybe. Maybe as well as a flightless alien, anyway. What did a surface creature understand of flight after all?
“Ellimist?” Lackofa prodded gently but insistently.
I took a deep breath. My next words would seal my fate, perhaps all our fates. “You can report to Farsight I can bring this ship within our field. And fly her when we get home.”
“It has weapons?”
“Yes. I don’t know what they do. But yes.”
“They kill, that’s what they do,” Lackofa said grimly. “And it may be that’s what we need.”
I was not in touch. No memms. And no time for instructions beyond those passed on from Lackofa. He shuttled to dock, quickly explained what we’d learned to Farsight, then raced back to instruct me.
“We’re jumping back through Z-space. We think from this short distance we can hit reentry pretty accurately. The Wise One’s orders are that you and I take control of this alien vessel and carry out any defensive actions possible.”
“You and I? You mean … you understand we’d have to be sealed in.”
“Yes,” Lackofa said flatly. “Yes. Jicklet will seal us in.”
I felt sick at the thought. But not as sick as Lackofa. He was oozing mones. Fear. The smell of it triggered my own panic reflex and I had to struggle to maintain my shaky control.
The Illamans travel for years at a time locked in their rectangular spacecraft. But Illamans are surface dwellers, used to taking shelter in constructions. For a Ketran the very idea of being enclosed is horrible.
Jicklet grabbed Lackofa’s arm. “Can you do this? I’ll take your place. You’re a biologist, I’m a tech. It’s not a job for a biologist.”
Lackofa looked for one drawn-out moment like he might grab at the safety hammock she was offering. But he shook his head no, unable to speak, but signaling no, he would do this himself. He would endure what no Ketran could endure.
“Like you told me, Lackofa, close your eyes,” I said to him. “Close your eyes. I’ll help you down.”
He had nothing to say, no wisecrack or wry observation. He was beyond that. And now I found that helping him with his fear helped me with my own.
I lowered him down gently to stand beside me. He was as stiff as a length of conduit.
I kept talking to him, reassuring him as Jicklet and her fellows worked to seal us in. No sky. No sky at all. Just keep talking to Lackofa, I told myself, just keep talking, don’t want him to panic, no panic, no panic.
I realized my own eyes were squeezed shut. I opened them a slit and looked out through the window. What kind of sub-Ketran beast could tolerate this? Peering at the sky through a false transparency? Locked inside a steel box? The Capasins must be animals. No sentient could live like this.
Not fair, not accurate, of course; both the Illamans and the Generationals endured captivity and were sentient. But I wasn’t in the mood to be reasonable. I wasn’t in the mood to do anything but scream.
“Are you okay?” Lackofa asked me. He had pried open one eye.
“No, are you?”
“No.”
“Come on. I’ll show you what I’ve figured out.”
“Do we have a name for this death crate?”
“Crate. That’s good enough,” I muttered. I considered which control stick would be easiest for Lackofa to manage. “Here. Put one hand here. This controls thrust. Forward is more, back is less, twist left I think means reverse thrust.”
He nodded. His quills were slowly draining their pink and the stench of terror mones was fading. He was scared but no longer near panic.
Through the window I saw the sky turn white. We had reentered Zero-space. In a few short minutes …
Lackofa looked away from the controls and down to the dead alien. “I was right. Probably Capasin,” he said. Then he actually touched the head, turned it to one side, peered at it thoughtfully, and drew out a small instrument pouch. He was a biologist — an exobiologist, for that matter. I guess touching dead aliens was easy for him. Probably even comforting.
All at once the white sky was black again, black and star-filled. I could not see Ket. Had the navigator failed? Did we even have a navigator aboard? I was ready to ask Lackofa, when we rotated and all at once my home world rose into view, huge, close. The familiar red rivers and gray-green morasses, the brown-scarred deserts and puffy, pale green clouds, all lovely beyond enduring. It was a stab to the heart.
My world had been assaulted. I let the rage flow freely. It drove out the fear, a little at least.
The MCQ3 swooped down and down, into the edge of atmosphere. The force field glowed red as we slowed to atmospheric speeds. We were returning to our old station, looking
