“. . . so if there are any errors, please tell me exactly what they say.”

Lily felt her heart beat faster at the words.

This was not within her scope of duties. She was not dumb, she had gone through emergency drills, worked in other fields.

But she’d never had so much riding on those drills. And she found her mind a blank.

All of that practice, however, did pay off. Stepping to the status console, she had no idea what to look for at first, the controls seeming foreign to her.

Her hands moved, turning on the internal diagnostics. An icon of a crying kitten appeared as it booted, and then a plethora of errors came up, filling her with dread.

Many of them had come up when she’d checked the primary system earlier, but now, on the diagnostic system they were longer, more detailed, and seemed even more terrifying.

Systems failures . . . the external auto-comms that let the pod’s computer talk to other ships was broken. Outside sensors were out, so it was flying blind. Something was wrong with thrusters, but due to the last two problems it could not say what. There was also a problem with the coolant lines and they were on back-up.

That last one alarmed her, and she brought it up. Were the engines going to overheat?

But no; it seemed the backups were sufficient. It only meant that if something went wrong with the secondaries that they might overheat and shut-off.

It’s recommendation; inform rescuers to prioritize her rescue in case of further problems.

“I’m trying to do that!” she said out loud.

But the engines were a good point. She was going the wrong way. She should turn them off as soon as possible.

“Deactivate engines,” she ordered.

More errors turned up; engines non-responsive to orders. Internal shut-down systems non-functional.

It came up with an option; execute emergency engine shut-off?

If she did that they wouldn’t be able to be turned back on.

Her eyes went to the 3D model nearby showing her location compared to the others. She had cobbled it together, but she felt confident in her skills with figuring it out.

She contemplated if she could feed that data into the system to help it correct course, but rejected it quickly. Navigation was extremely complex, and her map was nowhere close to precise enough for it to accept.

She wasn’t sure if she should turn off the engines, though. She should tell the Craton responders and they could tell her if it was a good idea or not. She just did not know enough to make such a call – she might need them for braking later.

Putting that aside, she prepared to respond when she remembered the medical issue.

“Release medical drone,” she ordered. She was feeling better; her pain was lessening, which she imagined was from the nano-probes and painkillers at work.

The drone was set into the wall, releasing with a soft whir as its engines activated. It floated towards her, scanning her up and down.

Then it turned and floated away.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

It did not answer, but moved around towards the boarding area. It was separated from the main pod by short bulkheads, and she wondered if the drone was malfunctioning as well.

“There’s no one else in here to worry about,” she said.

The drone dipped down, and she leaned around the wall.

And saw Davyyd.

“Oh stars!” she cried, dropping to her knees.

The drone was scanning the man, but it was obvious he was in a bad way. Burns came up over the back of his uniform, and around him was a pool of blood.

She dared peer over his shoulder, and what she saw made her almost gag.

“Is he irradiated?” she asked the drone.

“Negative. No signs of radiation damage. Third-degree burns over 22% of his body. Shock and blood loss.”

“Can you stabilize him?” she asked, touching the man on a spot that didn’t seem to be hurt. “Davyyd? Can you hear me?”

He shifted, groaning in pain.

The drone injected him with something and he suddenly took a deep, pained breath.

“. . . Lily?” he said softly.

“Davyyd! What happened? I didn’t know you were even on board! I’m so sorry, I couldn’t remember . . .”

“Short-term memory . . . affect of the drugs,” he said, his voice weak and hoarse. “Gave you what we had.”

“Why did you do that?” she demanded, feeling tears slipping from her eyes. “You needed them more than me!”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“You have a chance,” he said shortly. His eyes opened, white against skin darkened by soot. “Not enough to help me.”

The memory of him trying to head back into the ship, but knocked towards her by an explosion came to her.

She’d pulled him in. But then she’d passed out and he’d been awake enough to give her the meds . . .

Dark, how had he had the strength to do it?

“What can you do for him?” she asked the drone. “Stabilize him!”

“Working,” the drone said. “Injury severity beyond scope of care. Painkillers are only option but limited in quantity. Give anyway?”

“Yes!” she ordered.

The drone gave him another injection, and Davyyd breathed out slowly in relief.

“Do you feel better?” she asked.

“I don’t feel as bad,” he admitted. “But save them . . . I’m dead anyway.”

“Not if I can get us help,” she said. “Just hold on, okay?”

He nodded weakly, and she got up, running to the console.

“Craton, this is Lily Brogan in Pod 57 – the pod is flying blind and just keeps burning. We’re going further away from you and I can’t get the engines to stop normally. We’re running on secondary coolant lines. I can emergency stop the engines, but then they can’t start up again. Please advise!”

She took a deep breath, the guilt of not finding Davyyd sooner gnawing at her. “I’ve got one other in the pod with me, Response Officer Davyyd Pedraza. He’s badly burned and bleeding! The medical drone says it can’t do anything for him except give him pain meds . . . Please, we need help. I know others need it, too, but we’re in a bad way here.”

She sent it, trying to sort out what she should do next.

Looking back towards Davyyd, she wondered if she should do anything more for him, but the medical drone was still hovering over him. It was putting some kind of disinfectant sealant over his burns.

Lily knew she had no medical training. She’d just be in the way.

There was nothing left to do but wait and hope for help to come.

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

Before them hovered the three-dimensional image of the Maria’s Cog and its millions of pieces of debris.

Once all escape pods from the doomed ship had been accounted for, Cenz had joined with Cutter. The Bicet had been putting together the 3D model using the ship’s primary sensors as well as small scout probes.

Cenz had been shocked by Cutter’s use of them; he sent them on near suicide-runs deep into the debris fields. Dozens had been lost, but the sacrifices had been worth it.

“Look at the pattern of the burning,” Cenz said, zooming in on a piece of the hull.

It had once been one of the outer plates of the Maria’s Cog, but now it was half-slag.

“Yes. Melt patterning shows heat source came from inside vessel,” Cutter said.

“And the pulverization fraction indicates heavy boiling which suggests extreme temperatures,” Cenz continued. “That is consistent with a fast release from the fusion reactor – the temperature would have dropped much lower if the release had not been traumatic.”

Cutter was silent a moment as he studied the image. “I concur,” he said softly. “Though, the release of a fusion reactor plasma ring in any circumstances . . . is nothing if not traumatic.”

Cenz turned to study his co-conspirator and friend more carefully.

Cutter did not seem to notice. “Notice atomic marks – cross-hatching of burn pattern at this point. It indicates that there was not one but two plasma releases striking at almost the same moment. With certainty we can say both damaged reactors fully ruptured.”

“Two at the same time . . . The log suggested within the same second, but this is even more precise than that. Such marks would have been melted away by a second ring if it had come more than a fraction of a second later,” Cenz noted.

“Yes . . . two rings would also explain formation of primary ship pieces,” Cutter added.

“So we can state with certainty that the impactor hit both within a small fraction of a second.” Cenz concluded.

“Indeed. A single object, travelling at extremely high velocities, high enough to penetrate whipple shield, outer hull, and continue deep into vessel.”

Cenz knew that Cutter had to be right. But few things in space moved that fast . . . save for weapon projectiles.

“An enemy attack, then?” he asked.

“No,” Cutter said. “Simple misfortune.”

Cenz paused, taking that idea in. “Can you prove it, though?” he finally asked. “I certainly hope you can, but the evidence suggests this was a surgical strike, not an accident. Wouldn’t any such natural impactor have been detected by their drone network and scanners? It would have had to be travelling at incredibly high speeds to not be caught in time and to have the energy for this kind of penetration. And simply – what are the odds of a random object causing such a perfectly disastrous hit, Cutter?”

Cutter was silent a long moment. “Odds are small. But they do exist.”

“I must concur that it’s possible, but we need good evidence.”

“We have it,” Cutter said. “Debris piece #21827 – observe.”

It was a piece of the whipple shield – a standard piece of stand-off armor that all ships carried. Multi-layered, they were not designed or able to stop objects, not even small ones. Instead, they broke them up, absorbing much of the energy so that the heavy armor underneath could better resist being holed by every tiny meteor.

Their layered nature also meant, though, that they could sometimes catch the smallest pieces of debris.

It was what Cenz knew he was seeing now. The tiny black flecks had torn through the shielding, broken up on the hull and bounced off. They had penetrated a few of the layers on the way back out, but not all the way.

“Do you believe these are pieces of the original impactor?” Cenz asked.

“Yes,” Cutter replied.

“How did you even find this?” Cenz asked in awe. This was perhaps the most important find among the wreck that they could have located, and yet should also be one of the most difficult.

“At great cost,” Cutter said. “Primary evidence was key. Primary evidence would be at most dangerous area, epicenter of disaster. Thus sacrifice of drones was necessary.”

“Incredible. You sent the probes straight in, didn’t you?” Cenz asked.

“Yes. But drone losses unimportant now. Pieces of rock retain signs of recent shock and heat damage – showing that impact falls within time frame of Maria’s Cog destruction. Spectographic analysis shows a common composition of nickel-iron,” Cutter said. “Have not yet found point of origin of potential debris, however.”

“I may be able to help there,” Cenz said, bringing up a digital panel and flipping through screens. “If this is their spectographic data . . . I may be able to match it to a specific system we have studied.”

He looked to Cutter. “How was the ship oriented? If you have found this piece, I take it you know where the initial hit was? This would narrow the field.”

Cutter brought back up the image of the Maria’s Cog, now reconstructed to its original state. An area on her front cone was highlighted.

“Exact spot difficult. But object struck frontal shield, penetrating it. Vessel was oriented coreward.”

“Downtown,” Cenz noted.

Nearly all ships carried a frontal cone of heavy armor to block micro-meteors in their primary direction of travel. The Craton‘s was enormous, due to her shape, but since most ships were long and narrow tubes, the cone could be smaller on them.

If a vessel was not actively travelling, it was common to point the shield towards the galactic core – or downtown, as many called it.

A cute little colloquialism, Cenz thought, and apt. The core of the galaxy was incredibly crowded with stars, black holes, and other celestial objects, but the practice was largely just a habit rather than practical.

Taking the ship’s orientation into account, Cenz traced the route the impactor seemed to have taken through the ship – for it to have hit reactors eight and three meant he could plot a very specific course for it.

Following that line out, he peered into the cosmos of data.

“I have it,” he said. “Cutter, you are correct. I can prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

“We must speak with Captain,” Cutter said.