The mixcycla moves suddenly – not towards or away from us, but behind us. 'Help,' it says. 'Please help. I think I’m the only one left.'

The three newcomers come to a halt, pointing their weapons at us. We see our reflection in their black exoskeleton helmets.

The leftmost speaks with what sounds like the same language as the mixcycla. 'We only need one of you alive. Unless you want me to shoot your friend, you'll give us the data access we need.'

'What... what data...' the mixcycla begins, but is interrupted by the right-most of the intruders.

'Sergeant. The Mixcycli rarely use mixed-species crews.'

The left one – Sergeant – steps forward and pokes us with the dangerous end of its weapon. 'What are you? Are you a pet?'

'A pet? We don't know... A pet? Maybe?'

As we're considering this strange concept we notice one of our arms – the third on our left – has snuck behind Sergeant and encircled both its right leg and the left leg of its closest companion. Meanwhile the first arm on our right, symmetrical with our fighty one, starts enthusiastically rubbing itself over the leg of the last newcomer.

The sneaky arm hasn't been noticed, but the feely one has, and the creature jumps back, saying, 'Ew!'

The other two glance over, and that's all the distraction we need. Our sneaky arm yanks on their legs, while the mighty arm that broke the mechanical device outside our tank shoves them. Simultaneously, our fighty arm lashes out and thumps the one distracted by our feely arm, and they all go stumbling and tripping over backwards.

Then we're all surging forwards at once – the arm behind the feely one has obtained a weapon somehow, while the one at the back on the right curls around the right-most intruder's neck and begins squeezing as hard as it can – which is apparently pretty hard. Fighty arm keeps whacking its target in the head while our pokey arm stabs at weak points in the exoskeleton of the one in the middle.

We're not quite sure what our feely front-right arm is doing – it still seems to be rubbing itself over these creatures, while the one at the back on the left is tickling them and waving at them through their visors.

In any case, none of their rifles are aimed at us any more, so we swarm freely over them. Stealy arm figures out how to use its new weapon and shoots Sergeant through the helmet, while our chokey arm crushes the neck of the one on the right. Mighty and our fighty arm together keep the one in the middle down, then our feely, pokey and cheeky arms manage to remove its helmet, revealing a blue four-eyed creature within – whose skull Mighty proceeds to crack.

The sounds of the struggle cease, and we rest on top of the bodies. A word finally comes to us for these new bipeds: Ghutarn.

'Ghutarn Ghutarn Ghutarn,' we say, slapping the bodies and wondering if they're edible.

The mixcycla approaches again, but its demeanour is no longer scared.

'You did it! You saved me! My name is Squ'thetha Rf'thatha. I will repay this debt to you, I swear it!'

'Huh. Okay,' we tell it, not really understanding. 'Well, our name is...' We think for a moment. 'Our names are Saturday Gazette.' Our arms wave in the air one by one, left to right, front to back, and we remember how they have each helped us so far. 'This is Fighty, this is Feely, and Mighty, and Stealy. Sneaky, Pokey... Cheeky, and Chokey.'

'It's a pleasure to meet you... all... Saturday Gazette. Will you be my friend?'

'Yes!' We can't remember if we've had a friend before, but we know a friend is a good thing.

'Listen, you shouldn’t be understanding these words. You shouldn’t be consciously experiencing any of this, anything after we took you from your home. We have torn you from the dream of the wild. Your current consciousness represents a hideous crime on the part of the Mixcycli, of the crew of the Shaxixith’th, of my research unit, and of myself. I am sorry for what we have done to you.'

We wave our arms at its cryptic words. 'About that. What exactly have you done to us?'

Squ’thetha Rf’thatha takes a breath. But then, into the pause, that other disembodied voice speaks, reminding us of the continuing danger.

'[346. 345...]' it says.

'Actually, why don't you explain when we’re in that safe-sounding escape pod place?’ we suggest.

'That's a good idea,' our new friend says. 'But we have to go via the bridge. This way!'

It starts to run and we tug ourselves along after it. The mix realises we can't match its pace and returns to us, lowering its hindquarters. 'On my back, Saturday.'

We pull ourselves up onto it and it gallops down the corridor, taking a right turn then scrambling up a segment of wall where the wall becomes the floor, and what was the opposite wall becomes the ceiling, and we get all kinds of confused as directions change direction around us. We must have tightened our grip because Squ'thetha apologises. 'Sorry! I forgot you've never experienced gravity field changes! They’re quite common on our ships!

‘Huh,’ we say, trying not to squeeze Squ’thetha too tightly – especially with our chokey arm. Ships are more mysterious than we realised.

Squ'thetha gallops into a wide room with lots of curious panels and instruments. There's a lot of fire and sparks and smoke in here too, and bodies as well – mostly mixcycla but also a few of the Ghutarn intruders.

We slide off Squ’thetha’s back as it places its forelimbs on a panel and starts manipulating glyphs. The air before us flickers and flashes with plans and images and views of what we can only assume to be very bad news, because Squ’thetha turns to us, even paler in colour than before. 'We came to the bridge because we have to disable the craft that fired upon us,' it explains. 'A ship like that can just pick off the escape pods as they leave. There's no way to survive that.'

'Huh. How do we disable it?'

'That's the problem. We can't. It fired on us four times. It took out the ship's mind, engines, communications, and weapons. There's nothing left to us. There's nothing we can do.'

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'Huh. That's... annoying. Can’t we just sail into it?'

'Can we... what? How would we do that? We have no engines.'

'No, without engines. Do we have a sail? To use the wind?'

Squ'thetha stares at us. 'I'd forgotten. That local language. The linguistic quirks. I'm so sorry. Saturday. This isn't a water-based ship, like you've seen before. The Shaxixith’th is a starship.'

A starship.

And suddenly everything makes a lot more sense to us. Whatever the Mixcycli did to us helps us realise what a starship is; to know the difference.

'Oh. So... we're in nothing? There's no water... out there?'

'No. No water. No air. I'm sorr... wait.'

'What?'

'You're right! We can use the wind!'

'Without air?'

'With air. With the air that's on board!'

Squ'thetha returns to the control panel and two blob-like shapes appears in the air. 'This is us, it says, pointing to the larger blob. 'And this is our attacker. They had to move right next to us so they could send the boarding party across. We can vent all volatiles, evacuate all tanks, open all airlocks, valves and outlet ports on the opposite side of our ship, compress and release all liquids, gases and plasmas at once. Like an explosion. The momentum will send us in the other direction. If they’re slow, we can hit them, or at least we can force them into evasive action. If we’re lucky, we might keep them busy just long enough to get a pod to the planet. It’s our only chance.'

Squ'thetha pauses and squints at us.

'Do... do you understand?'

'Yes. It's like when we squirt water one way, and we go the other way.'

'Exactly! I knew your species was special. You were almost... but anyway, there's a problem. The controls are damaged. In fact, everything is damaged. I'll need to task all the subsystems manually.'

'Which means…?'

'Which means I can't come with you. You need to get to the escape pods and eject as soon as you feel the ship move.'

'That's not a good plan. What will happen to you?'

'I'll probably be killed. But it's okay. I owe you my life anyway.'

Feely reaches up to touch Squ'thetha's cheek. 'We don't like this plan.'

'It's the only way. Please. Someone needs to escape, to tell my people what happened here.'

'But we don't know what happened. We only just woke up.'

'Just tell them what you've seen. There will be an investigation. Seek out the Mixcycli, but also, if you can, tell the Okrahoonoon too. They'll want to know. There's something larger afoot here than just piracy.'

'We don't understand,' we confess.

'It must be so confusing. I wish I could explain everything, truly, but there is no time.’

‘The Mixcyxli? The Okrahoonoon?’

‘Yes… Saturday, there’s community out there… So much life! Wait…’ Squ'thetha returns to the control panel and enters some sort of code. 'Here… To help you understand. As the only survivor of the crew, I'm technically now in command, so I can task this to you...'

A round portal opens in a nearby wall. Squ'thetha goes to it, and returns with a small twelve-sided polyhedral device, which Stealy takes immediately, coiling around it.

'What is it?'

'A data buddy. You've been deputised. It's uncalibrated, but will give you captain-level clearance to Mixcycli systems, provide information on anything it can analyse itself, and access whatever systems it's capable of interfacing. Don't lose it.'

'We won't.'

'I've done a tertiary-system data-dump into it. It might be helpful, but I can't access much else without the ship’s mind. And now you must go. There isn't any time.’

‘Are you sure…’

‘Yes. I’m sure. Thank you for being my friend, Saturday Gazette. I'll reconfigure the evacuation lights to show you an unobstructed route to the escape pods. Good luck.'

And with that Squ'thetha tries to gallop off. It doesn't get far because Chokey still has hold of one of its hind legs.

'Whoops,' we say, and Mighty has to get involved to persuade Chokey to let go.

'We won't forget you, Squ'thetha,' we tell it, and it nods, pale, its mouth-hole wibbling in sadness, and gallops off to enact its plan.

Chokey sulks and is a bit reluctant to help our locomotion as we fold our arms again and stumble towards the exit. We follow the flashing red lights through the Mixcycli ship, awkwardly traversing corridors and shafts where gravity flips, and although we pass many curious sights the countdown in the air hurries us on.

Just as we pass the count of ‘[120]’ we reach a wide bay with circular hatches on the wall, each with a bright blue light overhead. There are a number of dead mixcycla on the floor, along with another deceased member of the Ghutarn boarding party.

We go to the nearest control panel and Pokey starts pressing glyphs, but the system doesn't respond.

'Uh, data buddy? we ask the device in Stealy's grip. 'Can you help with the escape pods?'

‘Unable to interface with local system.’ the buddy reports, softly glowing as it speaks.

'Huh. Do you know how to operate an escape pod?'

‘Unable to interface with global system. Request: State vessel class and ID.’

'We don't know. It's a Mixcycli ship of some kind...'

‘Suggestion: Determine escape pod status and integrity. Information: Mixcycli escape pod protocols are standardised. Red light over escape pod hatch indicates damage to pod...’

'None of them are red,' we note happily.

‘...green light indicates pod is ready for occupancy and launch...’

'Oh. They're all...'

‘...blue light indicates pod has already been ejected. Orange light indica-’

'But they're all blue!'

‘Speculation:’ the data buddy says. ‘All escape pods have already been ejected.’