“Brace!”

The call came and Pirra gripped onto her handhold as hard as she could.

The shuttle shuddered, rattling her to her bones as it grappled onto the escape pod.

The Response shuttle was not the smaller kind that could be launched from the ship’s coilguns, but had launched from a docking bay.

It dwarfed the pod below them, as well it should be; ultimately it would be carrying the passengers of three pods in addition to her team and their equipment.

Switching her HUD view to show the ventral cameras, she saw the flexible connector tube crossing the gap. It pressed to the port on the pod, and the lights turned green with a good seal.

“Pod 29, this is Commander Pirra. We have a firm seal, prepare for boarding. All personnel are to seal suits.”

“We read you, Commander,” came the reply. “But two of us are too badly injured to suit up.”

“Copy, Pod 29,” Pirra said.

She pointed to Kiseleva, her second-in-command and an experienced combat engineer. “Make sure that seal is fully secure. We don’t want a breach. Team two, with me. Team Three, prepare medical equipment this side.”

Already moving towards the egress hatch, she gestured to Najafi and Suon, the last two members of Fire Team One. “Prepare for getting out of here and double-check our route to the next pod.”

“Aye!”

Her team rushed into action, and Pirra pushed herself down into the hatch to their air tunnel.

The pressure read as sufficient, and she opened the seal and entered.

The tunnel was wide enough to give some space around the hatch at the bottom.

Hitting the pod’s surface, her scanners registered the chill of the outside of the pod, though she could not feel it through her suit.

As the rest of the team landed around her, Pirra was already interfacing with the pod hatch. Dr. Y’s remote drone came closer, scanning it.

“It has suffered damage,” he told her.

The hatch clunked loudly, the sound proof once more of the positive pressure in the tunnel.

But it did not move.

“We have hatch failure,” Pirra called. “Attempting manual override.”

Shit. If the hatch couldn’t be opened, they’d have to cut it and waste precious time.

The hatch was supposed to slide into the hull as opposed to opening outward, and her team scrambled for the manual levers, prying open the covers.

“Grip and pull on two!” Pirra called. “One – and two!”

They all pulled on the lever. It did not budge.

“I believe it is possible you can open it,” Y said.

Pirra felt her boots slipping. “Maximum power to magnet boots and try again. Give it everything!”

Her boots sealed themselves to the outer hull of the pod like they were a part of it, and she braced, gripping the handles with all her strength, her enhancements straining, her shoulder popping as she pulled.

It shifted. Then, which the screech of metal on metal it slid open halfway.

Hands came from down inside, pushing, and they managed to get the hatch open most of the way.

“That’s enough!” Pirra called, panting. She pushed herself over to the hatch.

“Oh thank the stars you’re here,” the man in the pod said, his eyes wide under his oxygen mask.

Y’s drone scanned the man, and Pirra saw the relevant data come up in her HUD. He had contusions and some cracked bones, minor radiation poisoning. Nothing that would make it hard to move him.

“We’re expecting four,” she said. “Is that right?”

“Yes!” the man said, reaching up to her.

Pirra took his hands, pulling him up. The lack of gravity sent him floating upwards, and she went in as soon as his boots cleared the hatch.

She passed a young woman who looked shell-shocked, Y scanning her next.

“It is mostly shock; she is largely unhurt,” he told her.

“Up the tunnel, they’ll help you!” Pirra said to the woman.

She went up and Pirra scanned the inside of the shuttle. She found two more people, one unconscious and the other trying to get up from the medical cradle he’d been put into.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“It’s okay, don’t move,” Pirra said, coming close. “Mwanajuma, get in here!” she called over the comm.

“How bad is he?” Pirra asked Y.

“Bad,” Y replied. “Scanning for more data.”

Mwanajuma, the medic, floated in and over as well, reaching up to open the man’s eye and look into it. “I’m reading severe radiation poisoning,” he said. “Probably five or six grays. He’s going to be puking all over the place soon.”

“I believe we can tolerate that,” Y replied. “I will attach an emesis bag. His prognosis is good if we get him back to the Craton within our time frame.”

“Will moving him make it worse?” Pirra asked.

“I don’t see that we have much choice,” Mwanajuma said. “Even if they may die in transport, if they stay here they’re dead for sure.”

Y floated closer and gave the man a shot. He was still moving feebly, apparently very confused about what was happening.

“That will calm him and hopefully stabilize him for the move,” Y said. “Don’t try to remove him out of the cradle – just take it.”

“Wait,” Pirra said. “He needs a mask.”

She grabbed one from the rack, but paused. Normally there was an air cannister on the thing, but the end of the tube on this one was empty.

Their time was very tight. She could look, but the tunnel was holding for now. The odds of something puncturing it only got worse the longer they waited.

She put the mask on the man without the air cannister. It would just take outside air, and then seal automatically if a breach occurred. What was in the mask would last him long enough, or she could always share oxygen with him.

“Move him,” she ordered Mwanajuma.

Looking over, she saw that Suarez and Lal were in the pod now.

“Lal, help with that one, Suarez, help me with him,” Pirra said, gesturing to the unmoving man.

He was still alive, just unconscious, her system told her. He was breathing.

She put the mask on him, and they hefted the medical cradle easily in the zero-g.

His heart rate was thready, her system told her as it connected to the cradle’s system, and he had been irradiated like the other man.

He would live, she told herself, not feeling confident in it – instead just demanding it of herself.

She looked at her timer. They were already behind schedule.

----------------------------------------

“As you can see, Captain, the impactor debris was travelling orders of magnitude faster than your average piece of space rock,” Cenz said, bringing up the data. “These pieces were annihilated on a level inconsistent with normal speeds.”

Brooks studied the data. He was not as versed in such things as his science officer or engineer, but the data was still clear even to him. He remained quiet a moment as he looked at it.

“How large was this object, then?” he finally asked.

“We have modeled different-sizes, but we expect it was approximately five meters in diameter,” Cenz replied.

“Could it have been a natural object accelerated intentionally as a novel form of attack?” Jaya asked.

“Unlikley,” Cutter replied. “Why go through such trouble when it still appears as attack anyway?”

“I agree that seems unlikely,” Brooks said. “But do you have an explanation for how the object got to be moving so fast? If it was travelling somewhere between 200 and 1000 kilometers per second, that’s orders of magnitude higher than most natural objects.”

“Yes,” Cenz said. “Knowing which reactors were hit and when, along with the ship’s orientation allows us to track the object’s original path.”

The ship appeared in the 3D model, with a red line extending out from it. It zoomed out to show multiple stars.

“Accounting for galactic rotation, it suggests that the object originated along this path. Along that path, we encounter the ternary system of Eris Setani.”

Jaya’s eyebrow arched. “Ominous name.”

“For good reason,” Cenz continued. “The system is a very messy collection of two neutron stars and a main sequence star they are actively feeding upon. The instability of a three-body orbit means that they could easily be the culprit – gravitationally slinging objects out at unnatural speeds.

“What’s more, however, the spectographic traces of the remains of the object recovered from the whipple shield, while not particularly unusual, match the makeup of objects from the Eris Setani system.”

“This system is sixteen hundred lightyears out,” Jaya said.

“Yes. But due to its unusual qualities, it is also a highly-studied location,” Cenz replied.

“My people dispatched long-distance probes to system one thousand years ago,” Cutter said. “Though we ourselves never visited, we understand it very well.”

Brooks was quiet again for a long time, considering.

“So you are saying,” he said, breaking his silence, “that this object was sent out of the Eris Setani system something like half a million years ago, and the Maria’s Cog just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“As we have not yet ascertained its exact speed, its time of origin would have been between 480,000 and 2.4 million years ago – but in essence you are correct, sir,” Cenz said.

“It seems too impossible,” Brooks said.

“I believe I have one more piece of data that may help, sir,” Cenz said. “As Cutter noted, his people have been placing probes in systems for study for millenia, which includes nearby systems.”

A chart appeared, showing small spikes – with a single sudden spike rising far beyond the others.

“In that time, their probes have detected seventeen spikes such as these, through their own systems or nearby systems. They were actually dismissed as sensor ghosts, simple errors. But the data matches exactly what we would expect from small objects travelling orders of magnitude faster than expected.”

Cenz paused, leaning back. “In other words, this area of space is simply in the line of fire for Eris Setani. For whatever reason, in ages long past it sent numerous pieces of incredibly fast debris flying this way.”

Brooks sat back.

“Frankly, I thought that discovering this was not an attack would make me feel better. But to think that such objects are truly flying around is far more disturbing than even a hostile force.”

“Would they have had any chance to see this coming?” Jaya asked.

“No,” Cutter said. “Drone screen was not sufficient for object of this speed. Would require more and better drones in different pattern. But if sufficient drones had been carried and deployed? Yes.”

“No one could have expected this,” Brooks said. “If it is indeed the case. The crew of the Maria’s Cog did everything right, but this still happened.”

Jaya was leaning forward, still studying the data. “What do you make of this, Urle?”

The Executive Commander was not present, working on another deck, but he had been remotely watching the conversation.

“It’s all possible, and I think pretty compelling. The odds are astronomical – but that’s just why we haven’t seen it before, since even the worst odds don’t mean impossible. We’re not seeing any enemy ships, no actual coilgun slug, Union intelligence has no information on enemy ships in our territory, especially not this deep. I think their theory holds water.”

“I concur,” Brooks said. “You two have done excellent work. I’m going to forward this preliminary work to command, so if you have anything else you want to add to that, get it to me shortly.”

“Captain,” Cutter said. “Time is of essence on different matter. Request permission to focus more effort upon errant escape pod.”

“What is your reasoning?” Brooks asked. “They are already a high priority given their situation, but is there more?”

“Pod’s radio signals display degradation that gives me concern,” Cutter said. “I fear damage may be more significant than initially thought. I must investigate further.”

Brooks nodded. “Permission granted. At this point, all we can do is make sure we get as many people in alive as we can.”