“What’s happening?” Fiori insisted.
Lyssa answered her. “I am hailing the ship on all frequencies, including all those once reserved for military ships and the Imperial Shield, plus the previously exclusive frequencies for the Imperial family. I am sending the hail in Common, and also in Uqup, as Major Dalton told me the captain, Eliot Bryne, is from Uqup Pedrottle. I am repeating the message every thirty seconds.”
Uqup was one of the oddities in the galaxy. They had their own language which they fought to preserve despite Common being standard everywhere else. But that was the Uqups for you—they were snotty about their very long history and liked to proclaim they were the first world to be settled, although no one had ever produced evidence to support the claim.
Had Lyssa sensed Fiori’s building tension and sought to placate her with a calm and detailed explanation? Even if she hadn’t, the effect was undeniable. Fiori let out a shaking breath and gave a nod. She stopped demanding explanations.
We waited a few more seconds. I heard the soft clip of claws on plasteel flooring and turned to watch Vara and Darb lope up the ramp and onto the bridge. “Over here,” I told Vara.
“Did you invite them?” Dalton asked me.
I nodded and thrust my fingers into the thick fur behind Vara’s head.
Dalton’s eyes narrowed. He beckoned Darb over to him. Darb bumped his shoulders against Dalton’s thigh and sat.
“Three minutes, Colonel,” Lyssa said softly.
“Interior scan, then. Superficial and fast for now.”
Lyssa nodded and focused forward again. We waited another sixty seconds, then she said, “There is no movement on the ship and no heat signatures.”
That wasn’t good.
Fiori gave a soft sound, half sigh and half moan.
No heat signatures wasn’t conclusive. There were sections on a ship which couldn’t be reached with the first fast scan.
“Is there atmosphere?” I asked Lyssa.
“The interior is pressurized.”
That meant the hull was holding atmosphere successfully. It didn’t tell me if the air was breathable, though.
I nodded. “Move into deep scan range.”
The ship shivered as the reaction engines kicked into gear.
“Dalton, switch your dashboard over to weapons and diagnostics,” I said.
“Already there,” Dalton murmured, his gaze upon the desk in front of him.
“Let me do something,” Fiori said. There was a note in her voice that told me she was only just managing to avoid begging me for distraction.
“Lyssa, route the biomarker channel to Fiori’s dashboard.” I looked at Fiori. “Anything with a heartbeat, I want to know about it. Anything warmer than a popsicle. If you see a semblance of life, check bio status—I want to know if they’re healthy.” An epidemic on the enclosed ship might explain the lack of movement over there.
Despite constant upgrades and improvements, short-range scanning of other ships was still an inexact science. Too many elements could interfere with the scans and provide false positives or report inaccurate negatives. Status spectrums could be skewed by ion storms, solar flares, or an extra few centimeters of hull thickness, but none of that would show on our results.
It was like peering through a muddy window to discern what lay inside an unlit room, but it was better than stepping into the ship with no data at all.
The Lythion’s engines cut back. Maneuvering engines flared briefly, bringing us to a complete halt.
“Dalton?”
He shook his head, his gaze on the board before him. “Nothing out there.” He paused. “Not on this side, anyway.”
I nodded. To be absolutely thorough, I should order a circuit of the planet, to see what lay behind it, but that would take a day or more and I had a feeling that neither Dalton nor Fiori would easily withstand such a delay, not when the Ige Ibas was right there in front of them.
We could see it for ourselves, this close. It was exactly what I had been braced to find—a second-hand converted crescent ship with a battered hull, bristling with scanner dongles and probe launch tubes. A retrofitted shuttle hunched upon the upper fuselage.
“Shuttle’s still there,” I murmured. “Only one shuttle?” I asked Dalton.
He nodded, his expression grim.
We wouldn’t have to head to the surface to find anyone, then. They wouldn’t bring the shuttle back from the surface while people were still down there. Ergo, no one was dirtside.
At least, I hoped the hell there was no one down there. After four days, they’d be out of air.
“Start the scan,” I said.
“Scanning,” Lyssa murmured.
I straightened and stretched.
“How long will this take?” Fiori asked, staring at her dashboard. From where I stood, I could see that no data was showing there, yet.
“It could take hours,” I warned her.
“It’s a small ship,” Lyssa said. “Three hours, from engine cowling to nose antennas.”
“Another three hours?” Fiori breathed, her tone stressed. She glanced at the big windows, where the Ige Ibas hung motionless. We were barely ten klicks away from it. I imagine it felt to Fiori that she was close enough to reach out and touch the ship.
“There’s plenty to do in the meantime,” I told her, which was true for me, but not necessarily for her. I had a feeling that there would be scant bio data for her to analyze.
I looked up at the Ige Ibas myself. It looked just like any other ship parked in orbit around a planet, which was to say there was nothing to see. Yet I could almost feel the emptiness inside it.
I already knew we would have to go over there and check it out in person. The lack of movement and warm bodies would need to be confirmed. Besides, both Dalton and Fiori would insist upon seeing the inside of the ship for themselves, so they could accept that the scans were correct and there was no one aboard.
As the senior officer onboard, I could decide against going over and investigating in person, and there were a lot of good reasons to make that choice. The lack of
