“I accept,” he said. “And thank you.”
“This,” Nyna said, pointing to the rack beside her, “is almost certainly armor. I bet it’s stronger than it looks.”
She held the vest-like thing out to me, but even from ten feet away, I could tell it would be too small.
Nyna noticed as well, so she held it up to herself, and put it on. It was a perfect fit.
“Here,” Reaver said, “try this one.”
She was holding up another, much larger vest. I slipped it over my head. It was a perfect fit. How far did the Lakunae’s tentacles reach into this world?
Nyna reached into her colorful backpack and retrieved Spirit-Watcher.
“Let’s see if this helps,” she mumbled, looking around for a while. “Nope,” she finally said as she stuffed them back into her bag. “There’s too much information here. Too many things, I guess. Plus, there’s so much technology in the next room, I’m getting data from that, too. Maybe there’s a way to tone it down a bit so that I can only see the things I want to see. I’ll figure it out later.”
She sighed and went straight back so scanning the room.
“This,” she said as she held up what looked like a deep shadow, “is, um, oh, it’s a cloak. Yaltu likes cloaks, so I’ll give it to her. No idea if black’s her color, though. We’ll see.”
“And these,” Nyna said, holding what appeared to be five-fingered gloves, one in each hand, “look like stylish gloves. Well, I needed a pair of gloves, I guess.”
She put them on and planted her hands on her hips. She opened her mouth to say something but hesitated, then slowly turned her eyes toward her waist.
“That was weird,” she said.
“What was weird?” Reaver asked, slightly alarmed.
“When I touched my waist, for a second, I thought I could see something.”
Nyna slowly walked from the room and laid her hand on a small cylindrical object on a -table just outside the door in the next room. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head for a moment, then she gasped.
“Yup,” she whispered. “That was a rush. These are mechanics' gloves, for sure. When I touch things, I can sort of see the circuitry. For instance, this part,” she said, holding up the object, “is completely busted. It was some sort of cooling device.”
“Nice,” I said. “That’s going to a be useful trick.”
If we knew for sure what could and what couldn’t be repaired, we could intervene at exactly the right moment and not carry along stuff that would turn out to be useless to us. With those gloves, I also hoped we could get a final verdict on Skrew’s mech.
“Now, this is something I could use,” Reaver piped up as she gripped an odd-shaped Void-pistol. She pointed at the far corner of the room. “It’s kind of weird, but I bet it’s powerful.”
I tossed her a Fex, which she inserted into the grip before inspecting the weapon again.
“It doesn’t seem to have a trigger,” she complained.
A moment later, she clicked something with her opposite hand and flinched when the pistol’s barrel silently extended a full yard, a stock popped out of the other end, and a scope snapped into place on top.
“Oh,” she said with a laugh, “it’s not a pistol. And there’s the trigger.”
Immediately, Nyna burst back into the room.
“So, I found this thing out there,” she babbled, “I mean, I found a lot of things, but nothing like this one. At first, I thought it was broken, but it’s not. Well, it was, but nothing bad. It needed a new power cell. So, at first, I was like, where am I going to get a new power cell for this thing, right? Then, I remembered that there are a lot of things out there, so there’s probably a power cell that would fit, right? So, then—”
“Nyna,” I said softly, “relax. Tell us what’s going on. What did you find?”
“It’s a… scanner, I guess,” she said a little slower. “Anyway, we’ve got trouble coming. Five troubles to be more precise. All headed this way fast.”
I quickly joined her and took the device. It looked like a datapad, something the Martian Storm Marines used all the time. It was a portable computer capable of transferring data to and from a central information source quickly and efficiently.
Displayed on the screen were five icons. A glowing red line behind them indicated their origin—Brazud. A green, blinking dot in the center of the pad showed our own location.
I tapped one of the red icons, and it changed to a wireframe diagram of the inbound enemy vessel. It was a new one to me, but the design was unmistakable. It was Xeno.
“Did I bring them?” she asked, hands on her mouth.
I tapped the screen again and studied the icons for a second.
“No,” I concluded. “Based on their speed and how far they’ve traveled so far, they left more than an hour ago. My guess is that the sand-creature called them in. It’s probably telepathic. I bet the Xeno gave it to Tortengar to spie on him, just like he was spying on the bureaucrats. So they’ve been informed, and now, they’re coming.”
The room grew silent as everyone waited for me to continue, to tell them how we were going to resolve this situation. And I knew what had to be done.
“Get the people ready,” I said to Timo-Ran. “Equip as many as you can. You aren’t going to have a lot of time for training. No time, in fact. So, try to find people who already have weapons experience. If we fail, the Xeno will be on you in no time. Do not surrender. They don’t understand surrender. They’ll kill all of you or take you as slaves. They have no mercy. They’re animals and cannot be reasoned with. Also, they’re smart, so don’t underestimate them. Now, go!”
Timo-Ran nodded once, grabbed an armful of rifles, and ran through the barracks and up
