These were our people in here. I could tell immediately, because many of them were dead, slumped in their shells. That explained the rich smell of decomposition. Others stirred weakly as the lights came on. They were in pitiful condition. As Jai had pointed out dryly only a while ago, there was no plumbing in these shells. And no food dispensers. And no way out of the shells for mere non-enhanced humans.
The stench was eye-watering, but all I felt was horror and abject pity for the poor souls. They were wretched indeed. How long had they been here? Days at least. Those who had survived were dehydrated, skinny and weak. Their fingers made weak waving motions. Their eyes fluttered, the light too bright for them.
“Mace! Mace!” Fiori ran for the end. Dalton, too. They stopped in front of one of the shells.
I held everyone else back. “Marlow, we need to get those who are still alive out of the shells. Can you and Lyth manage?”
He nodded, his jaw flexing. “With my teeth, if I have to.”
Yoan pushed him aside. “Wait…let me try something.” He got the flashlight out of his jacket pocket and brought it over to the nearest shell. He glanced at the occupant, a man who could barely open his eyes. “Just hold on, friend,” he murmured and crouched down by the side of the shell and examined what looked like a dataport or a power conduit opening at the bottom of it. He turned the flashlight in his hand and slotted it into the port. It dropped in with a quiet snicking sound.
“Twist it,” Sauli suggested, over Yoan’s shoulder.
Yoan turned the flashlight.
The whole shell gave a solid thunk, and the two bars wavered open, one end coming free.
Sauli patted Yoan’s shoulder, as Marlow reached over them to catch the man, who sagged now the bars were gone, and lifted him out.
“The others,” Sauli said, his tone urgent. “Mace, first,” he added, before I could.
Yoan moved down to the end of the room. I bent over Marlow, where he had laid the man out on the floor. The man was trying to speak but had no strength to do more than whisper. He looked as though he was trying to raise his arms, but they wouldn’t lift. He didn’t have the muscles left to move them. His body had cannibalized itself in order to survive.
Marlow looked up at me, his expression reflecting my own horror.
“I know,” I said in agreement. I looked around the room. “Twenty-four here. There were forty-three on the Ige Ibas. There has to be another room of them.”
“And the three other ships that disappeared…their crew might be on this ship, too.”
I shook my head. “Too long ago,” I said. “Even if they are here, they won’t have lasted this long. But these people, we can help.” I glanced at Jai, who didn’t dispute me. He looked as ill was everyone else, but he turned to help them lift out the survivors without a murmur.
I stepped carefully over the bodies and moved down to where Fiori and Dalton were crouched over Mace. I touched Fiori’s shoulder. She looked up at me. Her cheeks were wet with tears.
“Is there anything you can do for any of the rest, right now?”
“Not here,” she said softly. “Not without a full hospital suite and a ton of gear. The best thing we can do for them now is get them off this ship.”
I nodded. She returned her attention to Mace. He was an emaciated sliver of the energetic red-headed man I remembered, and his blue eyes passed over my face without recognition.
I stepped out of the way. There was nothing I could do for any of them, and someone had to start thinking. We’d spent far too long moving from room to room. Surely one of the slavers would come into the corridor soon, and then the alarm would go up and we would have a running battle on our hands.
Or an entrenched battle, most likely, because I wasn’t sure what we could do to get off the ship. I didn’t know what laid beyond the corner of the corridor. I didn’t know how many slavers were on it. There could be thousands of them, which meant we were badly outnumbered.
We needed to find a shuttle. Even a handful of their one-man fighters would do, if they didn’t run to shuttles. But they had to get their slaves off the ship somehow.
I was close to the transparent wall and I moved even closer to it, trying to think of what to do next.
Yoan had freed the last of the survivors—only six of them.
I leaned against the wall, next to the domed dashboard and hung my head. Humans had done this to fellow humans. While I had thought they were aliens, I could sort of understand the ruthless aggression. But this just made me sick and sad.
I found myself staring at the depression on this side of the dome. I had tried pressing my fingers against the two depressions, in the room we’d woken in, and nothing had happened.
I switched my gaze to the lock on the nearest shell, avoiding looking at the human remains in the shell. The shape of the hole was the same as the depression on the dome.
“Yoan!” I called softly and waved him to me.
He worked his way down the narrow lane, carefully stepping over and around the survivors.
I pointed to the lock on this side of the dome. “Try that one.”
Yoan pulled out the flashlight key and fitted it into the lock. It didn’t surprise me when the key seated itself without protest. Yoan turned it, and the dome made a clicking sound.
“The other side,” I urged him.
He unlocked the other side, too.
I stepped around to face the dome and put my hands on either side and lifted it. It pulled away with a slight resistance, but it was light and easy to move. I put it on the ground by my feet
