If I had still been with the Rangers, I would have chosen to withdraw and let a first-in team investigate.
But there were no Rangers anymore. No specialist teams, no other authority groups who would care enough to go in. There was just me and two anxious parents.
And Fiori would slit my throat with a laser scalpel if I announced we were not going to enter the Ige Ibas ourselves. Dalton might even help her.
While Lyssa did her deep scan, which would likely give us no definitive answers, I could prep the shuttle and suits.
And the weapons.
If that really was an abandoned ship drifting out there, then where the hell had everyone gone? The possible range of answers was narrow, and all of them dangerous for us on the Lythion.
—8—
Dalton was a better pilot than me. He had actual training, while I winged it based upon watching a thousand pilots do their job. So I let him take the shuttle controls, while I nudged Darb out of the way so I could reach the co-pilot seat.
“You really had to bring them?” Dalton asked. I could tell from his tone that it wasn’t an idle question.
I fitted myself into the co-pilot chair. We were all wearing environmental suits, even Fiori, who sat on the passenger bench running down the side of the compartment behind us. Vara sat obediently beside her.
The suit made the chair a tight fit.
“We’re in suits, and they aren’t,” Dalton pointed out.
“Yep.” I brushed a lock of hair out of my eyes with an irritable wave.
“Gut talking?” Dalton asked softly.
“Yep.”
He drew a breath. Let it out. “Okay.” He raised his chin and spoke into the air. “Release when ready, Lyssa.”
“Detaching,” Lyssa’s voice said, emerging from the speaker overhead.
The shuttle gave the little lurch that announced we were free of the overhead gantry and independently moving.
Dalton nosed the shuttle forward.
A few kilometers could normally be covered in less than a handful of minutes. I said, “Dead slow, Dalton.”
He didn’t argue, even though it would triple the time it took to cross over to the Ige Ibas.
I pulled up the short-range scanners and got them going. Lyssa would be scanning, too, but I wanted the redundancy. My heart was clipping along way too fast for sitting on my ass.
As I worked, I could feel the distance between us and the Lythion increasing. My uneasiness built the farther we got. We were vulnerable out here. At least while on board the Lythion, no matter what the threat, we could turn tail and run like hell.
While we were on the shuttle and, in a few minutes, on the Ige Ibas, running wasn’t an option.
Vara gave a soft whine. She sensed my jitters.
I drew in a breath, just as Dalton had. And another one.
“Hey,” Dalton said.
“I’m fine,” I said shortly.
“Your heart rate is elevated,” Fiori said.
Checking over one’s shoulder while wearing a suit was near impossible. Doing it strapped into a tight-fitting maneuvers chair upped the difficulty factor, but I managed to turn my head enough to glare at her. “You’re monitoring me?”
She lifted her forearm to indicate the flat panel mounted on the sleeve of the suit. “Medical panel.”
“Great.” I looked at the ship we approached, my middle winding up into a good, hard knot. I needed a distraction. “What was Mace doing, running with wildcatters, anyway?” I put the question out there between the two of them.
Silence.
Fiori cleared her throat. “He’s an adult. Capable of making his own decisions.” But her tone was apologetic.
“I let him go,” Dalton said, his tone flat.
I looked at him, surprised. “With wildcatters?”
Dalton didn’t look at me. “If I hadn’t said yes, he would have gone anyway. This way, I could check the ship out, talk to the captain…I know Eliot Byrne slightly—he’s opened up two of the worlds we’ve lived on. He’s sensible, for a wildcatter.”
“Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
Dalton rolled his eyes. “He’s had two good finds. He doesn’t need to prove himself or fight to make it.” He shrugged.
That did make a difference. If the captain was already successful, already raking in the royalties, then he wouldn’t feel the need to take stupid risks.
“So Mace wanted adventure,” I murmured. “Sounds just like you.”
Dalton’s smile was small, but it was there.
I sat back and watched the Ige Ibas creep closer and tried to keep my heart steady. It had been a very long while since I’d shipped out with a medic watching my tell-tale vitals. I was out of practice.
The ship drew closer and details grew clearer. There were a lot of probes and scanners—some of them I could name and some of them were like nothing I’d ever seen before. I even spotted an ancient radar scanner.
If your job entailed exploring unknown dirtballs, it made sense to scan the shit out of the place first. If we had this vast range of scanning choices aboard the Lythion, perhaps we might have been able to figure out the mystery of the Ige Ibas without actually going there.
The shuttle drifted up close to the hull of the Ige Ibas. I could see score marks from meteorites and space debris. If the hull had ever held a color, it was gone now. The metal was raw and dull.
The hull was convex. My heart sank.
“Curved hull,” Dalton said. “We can’t connect directly, then. We could use a molecular barrier tunnel to cross.”
“I’m going over alone.” I pointed. “Get as close as your nerves will let you.” I unclipped the belts and struggled out of the chair.
“You shouldn’t go alone,” Fiori protested. “What if something happens to you?”
“That’s why I want you two to stay here. You’re my backup. If something happens to me, you either come in with guns blazing, or you run like hell. Dalton gets to make that call.” I paused to let that sink in. “Clear?”
Fiori’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded. “Clear, Colonel.”
I moved into the compartment
