Hads was the one who woke him in the end. He’d been asleep for the better part of twelve hours. Hads, her flight suit unzipped to the waist had come and shook him awake rather than wait for him to wake up. Her torso covered only in an elasticised body sleeve; rather than the usual bulky flight suit, Zag was reminded how small she was. With her narrow shoulders and hips, leanly muscled physique, and shorter than average stature, one could be forgiven for not seeing the threat she could pose.
One look at her expression dismissed that notion. Her face was contorted in equal parts rage and fear. Through sleep caked eyes, Zag saw that the expression was mostly the latter, but still Hads hands squeezed uncomfortably at his shoulders.
“What? What’s wrong?”
She clamped her hand over his mouth, gesturing with her head for him to rise and follow.
He went to shrug her off, but she shoved him painfully back into the chair, her hold on his face spiking pain into his already tortured spine, which had still not recovered from their earlier antics.
She looked over at Rin, who still slept soundly, sprawled like a child across her pilot's seat. A small snore emanated softly from the pilot’s mouth.
He slowly nodded, and she released her grip. He followed her from the bridge, and at her gestured insistence, climbed the ladder to the communication annex.
The room was a mess. Wires snaked across every available surface, some hastily taped, others hanging loose. In several places additional screens had been affixed, in others custom modules Hads had commissioned or made. Most of these Zag had no idea about, their origins, functions and design was completely foreign to him. Zag could recognise maybe a third of what he saw: cryptographic cypher-pucks, splicers and high end signal forgery tools.
He let the bulkhead close behind them before he spoke his first words. They were a harsh whisper.
“What the hell are you playing at Hadrial, you nearly snapped my neck clean in half!”
“Blame Rin.” She murmured back sullenly, “If your necks broke it won’t be because I gave you a little jostle. After that fiasco we’ll all be lucky if we’re not a foot shorter.”
Zag sighed, “Hads. One last time. What. Is. Going. On.”
She didn’t respond at first. She flipped a few switches on her flight seat. A humming electrical sound whirred into life. She turned around to face him.
“Signal scrape was a success. I’ve got all the data here.”
“That’s good news, right? Could have waited till I woke up though.”
She shook her head, “We’ve got the data from Eris, It’s been cracked and it's exactly what we thought. Major mining expedition.”
“Okay so?” Zag ventured, he was beginning to get frustrated. The pain in his neck and back was progressing from a dull ache to an intolerable annoyance.
“When you guys were out I tried my hand at cracking the data. At first I had heaps of trouble, I couldn’t seem to make any sense of it. There were errors and nothing I did seemed to fix it.”
She took a seat and continued, “So I went into the raw data, and had a look through the log. That’s where I noticed it. We didn’t just receive the one signal, there were two, overlaid over each other.”
Zag leaned against the bulkhead and crossed his arms. It must have conjured a mighty unimpressed image, for Hads went on, quickening her pace.
“I stripped them both out. The second signal was weak and scattered. Honestly, it was barely there. It was a distress call-”
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Zag stood up straight, his anger and frustration rising again. “You waited twelve hours to tell me we received a distress call? Hads we’re halfway back across the solar system now!”
She put her hands up placatingly, “I know, I know, just listen. It was old, nearly thirty years old. Someone had tight beamed it back home-”
Zag interrupted again, “Nobody tight beams a distress signal Hads, it defeats the point most of the time. You want somebody nearby to come bail you out. Unless you’re calling back to a station or between planets, high-gain tight-beam is just a recipe for either nobody hearing you or waiting a long time for them to send somebody out.”
Hads nodded agreement. “That’s all true enough.” She paused for a moment playing with the cuff of her flight suit, haphazardly tied around her waist. “It might have something to do with the people sending it in this case.”
Zag met Hads steady gaze and cocked his head quizzically.
She sighed, “The signals from the Pietas.”
Zag blinked in surprise.
The Pietas had been the first colony ship to ever leave the solar system, at least intentionally. An enormous ship, the Pietas was closer to a traveling mausoleum than your traditional void-vessel.. The expedition ship had been stocked with enough fuel for a journey out beyond the reaches of the solar system. To save weight, the designers had decided to send only a skeleton crew of caretakers, pilots and essential personnel. Using cryogenics to extend their lifespans, the crew would ensure the safe function of the vessel, and the viability of its cargo: close to a million fertilized embryos taken from all across the solar system. The Pietas’ cargo could be used to jumpstart a population, even through disease, war or poor circumstance of whatever world they found way out there in the dark.
It had been gone from the edges of known space for nearly thirty years, and wasn’t scheduled to make arrival at its destination for another sixty.
Zag was dumbstruck, “So they’re in trouble? Surely they can’t be expecting help? Even at full burn there's not a ship in all the universe that could catch up to them.”
Hads shook her head, “They know we can’t come get them. It’s not that.. It's…. Here, just listen.”
She turned and typed briefly on a keyboard. Over the speakers in the small room roared a wash of static. Interspersed in the static wash was a voice, cutting in and out.
“Federation Navy Captain……Korano…….breaches on multiple decks…….crew are repelling as best as we can……”
Zag leaned in, in the background there was the sound of sirens, and very faintly what sounded like screaming. The voice continued.
“They’re almost at the bridge…..an honor…….they’ll be there soon….”
Then there was a countdown, a slow automated voice counting down to zero.
Moments before reaching zero, through the static, there was the unmistakable staccato of gunfire, then nothing but static.
Zag looked at Hads. Something like disbelief must have shown on his face, because she answered his question automatically, “It’s authentic. Codes check out.”
Zag put his head into his hands. The slow, throbbing pain of before welled up intensely, and his vision swam.
“Repelled?” He asked, his words muffled by his palms.
“That’s the word I heard too.”
“He’s light years away from the nearest living thing! What could he possibly be repelling?”
Hads gave a weak shrug. “Would that we got the complete message. It was so weak by the time it got here that I could only manage to pull together that much. I would have missed it entirely if we weren’t listening so hard for the signal from Eris..” She trailed the last sentence suggestively.
With an almighty effort Zag raised his head to look at Hads. “What do you mean by that?”
She walked over and grabbed Zag by the shoulders. “Listen, I don’t think anyone else is going to pick up that message. Maybe that other ship we buzzed, but that's still only a maybe. I think we should make sure it stays that way, at least for now.”
Zag felt anger well up in him. He stepped away from her, and her hands fell away from him, “What are you talking about?”
“Eventually they’re going to figure out that the Pietas is gone Zag. Either they’ll stop getting reports, or maybe they pick-up some scrambled portion of the message we got. All I know for certain is that the Federation won’t be keen to relay the details from that message. It sounds like something bad has happened, maybe mutiny or… worse.”
Zag was incredulous, “Worse than the loss of a thirty year expedition? Worse than hundreds dead and the federation's dream of empire shattered? Hads we have to report this. We can do it anonymously, drop it from a public terminal or-”
She cut him off. “You know there’s no safe way to ditch that information. Even I won’t be able to stop there being traces of us. The federation has enough resources to undo any obfuscation I can manage, and even if they couldn’t we might still be compromised by our friend back there. And there's also the other thing…”
“The other thing?”
“They said repelling Zag. Repelling. Not putting down unrest, not locking down for a plague. If it was just a mutiny there’s no point in reporting it until it's squashed. Like you said there's no chance of rescue or support out there.The only reason to call back is to warn us.”
“Are you seriously implying what I think you are?”
She shrugged, “I don’t know what actually happened out there Zag, but if they did repel something, the federation will want it kept quiet at all costs. That makes that recording a dangerous thing to have hold of right now.”
Zag didn’t respond.
Hads turned and pulled a memory crystal out of her terminal. She handed it to Zag.
“Look, just don’t tell the others yet. This crystal has the only copy of that message and it's keyed for you. It wouldn’t stop federation signals intelligence, but it’ll do for most everybody else.”
“Why give this to me?” Zag asked, “You could have just deleted it and I never would have known.”
Hads was turning away now, climbing back into her flight seat. “I just get the data Cap, you figure out what to do with it.”
He weighed the small crystal in his hand and came to his decision. It felt heavier than it should have.
“We’ll deal with this when we’re back on Minerva.”