"Lissa, what's our status?"

Captain Mims stared out the viewports, hands clasped behind his back. The Jumpgate grew larger as they approached. Lissa pulled herself out from under the third console terminal. She tucked a tool back into her tool belt. "We're clear, Captain," she said. "I've disconnected all monitoring systems in the bridge and the kitchen."

The Captain nodded. "Yvian?"

"I've had drones go through the ship. They didn't find any Xill surveillance devices." Yvian checked the scanners again. The Quig and its escort were still keeping pace, but they hadn't taken any action. If they noticed the pixens spy proofing the ship, they didn't seem to care. "Hey," a thought popped up. "Why aren't we disabling the monitors in the whole ship?"

"Safety," the Captain shrugged. "If something happens in the engine room or the cargo bay we want to be able to see what's going on. We do most of our talking on the bridge or the kitchen anyway."

"What about our quarters?" Lissa asked.

"There aren't any in the quarters," the human told her. "I want to be able to take a dump without anyone watching me."

"What makes you so sure they hacked us?" Lissa asked.

"The Vore," Mims explained. "Exodus knew what we called them, but we only made up the name a few days ago. Besides, the Xill are famous for hacking systems. They're the reason ship systems are separate from comms unless you manually enable remote."

"Hmm," Yvian hmmed. "I would think an SI would know better than to make that kind of mistake. Aren't they supposed to be super smart?"

"It was intentional," the human said. "He wanted us to know."

"What makes you say that?"

"Nothing he says is idle." Mims ran a hand through his hair. "The SI of the Singularity Wars knew humans better than humans do. They could read micro expressions, predict behavior, manipulate responses. It was practically mind reading. He knew exactly what we'd do, and what to say to get what he wanted."

"So he was playing us through that whole thing?" Yvian didn't like the sound of that.

"Not just us," Mims guessed. "I don't think the other Xill know what he's doing. Most of them are barely able to communicate with us. I'm pretty sure the bastard's playing his own game."

"What about the other SI?" Lissa asked. "Didn't he say all the human made ones joined the Xill?"

Mims shrugged. "No way to know. Maybe they're in on it or maybe they don't have a clue."

"So is he just playing us, or was he trying to tell us something without alerting the others?"

"No idea," Mims admitted. "Exodus the Genocide was the most subtle and dangerous of all the SI. He wants us to think he's on our side, but..." He shrugged.

"Why are we working with these things?" Lissa wondered. "You know we can't trust them."

"No choice," Mims told her. "The Xill are desperate. Exodus threatened to destroy our species more than once. We either help, or we watch a war of extinction."

"Do you think they'll honor the deal?" Yvian asked. "If we win?"

"They'll play us straight until they get what they want," the human asserted. "After that, who knows?" He pulled out his helmet and put it on. "Suit up, ladies. We hit the Gate in four minutes."

"These suits suck," Lissa complained. She settled a helmet over her bulky Confed void suit. "Why aren't you in one, again?"

"I only have two low-tech suits." Mims told her. "Exodus said something's shutting down all nanotech in the sector. The GR17s are made of that stuff. If mine locks up, I'm counting on you two to get me out before I suffocate."

Lissa sighed. "I hate space."

"I know," Mims shrugged. "But that's where the money is."

Yvian braced herself as the Gate affect resolved. The Xill didn't know what was shutting down nanotech. They had no way to know if it would affect ship systems. Exodus had been pretty confident it wouldn't kill organics, but Yvian suspected he didn't know that, either. She didn't feel anything as they entered the sector. She took that as a good sign.

"Running systems check," Lissa said.

"Scanning the area," Yvian reported.

"Checking my suit," the Captain announced. "Huh. The HUD's not working."

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"Uh... we've got a problem." Lissa looked up from her console. "The computer's... loading?"

"Loading?" Mims turned. "Computer response is supposed to be measured in picoseconds."

"I know," Lissa said. "But that's what it's doing."

"Scanners are doing the same thing," said Yvian. Her screen was blank. "At least, I hope that's what they're doing."

The Captain checked the nav console, then switched to the console on his wrist. "Is anyone's personal computer working?"

The girls checked. They weren't.

"Hmm..." The Captain stood. "We've still got lights." He jumped. "Gravity's still working." He sat back down. "Everyone strap in. I'm going to check the inertial dampeners."

The Captain's modular console wouldn't switch modes, so the human forced it open and pulled out the manual controls. Yvian looked up at the viewport. Several ships were hanging motionless in front of them. They were about to crash into the nearest of them. "Mims!" she yelled, pointing.

The human cursed, yanking on the controls. The Random Encounter shot sideways. Yvian's hands clamped down on her seat. She needn't have bothered. The sudden motion wasn't accompanied by the G forces of a failed dampening system. If Yvian hadn't suddenly lost sight of the other ships, she wouldn't have noticed they were moving at all Mims spun the ship around to face them again, and brought the Encounter to a stop.

"Good news," he quipped. "Inertial dampeners are still online."

"Maybe test that sort of thing a little gentler next time?" Yvian suggested.

"You shush," said the Captain.

"Yeah," Lissa followed up. "It's not his fault he almost killed us." Yvian couldn't be sure with his helmet on, but she suspected Mims was rolling his eyes.

"Anyway," he said. "We've got flight control." He angled the ship away from the derelicts and pressed a button. Fourteen lances of green light flashed, speeding away from the viewport. "And weapons. Lissa, check on life support. If it's working, I need you to see if we can make the tractor beam work without a targeting computer. Yvian, you're with me."

"What are we going to do?" Yvian asked.

"We're going to get some optics and step outside." Mims gestured at his defunct console. "We don't have sensors or navigation. If we wanna find this thing, we'll have to do it the old fashioned way."

Twenty minutes later found Yvian in the void, holding a sniper rifle. Mims stood next to her with a rifle of his own. Half a kilometer from them drifted a Xill Quig and half a dozen fighters. The ships they'd almost run into.

Their plan was simple. Point the gun at the brightest lights they could find and look down the scope. While they were both looking, Yvian knew the real reason she was there was that the Captain was worried his suit would give out on him. She made sure to look his way every few seconds, but he seemed to be doing fine.

After half an hour, they didn't find anything useful. Their comms were inoperable, so the human pressed his helmet against hers. "Lets try the other side," he said.

"Ok." They walked to the bottom of the ship on magnetic boots.

Ten minutes later, Yvian found what they were looking for. Even at maximum zoom, the planet was small in her scope. Small, and silver. Yvian touched the Captain's shoulder to get his attention, and pointed at it. The Captain looked through his rifle, nodded. He looked around, thinking, then walked back towards the airlock, waving for Yvian to follow.

They found Lissa on the bridge. She'd taken off her helmet. She was fiddling with a remote control for a drone unit. "Any luck?" she asked.

"Maybe," said the human. "We've got a place to start, at least. I take it life support works?"

"Everything does," said Lissa. "Everything that's not a computer. Simple automated functions and control modules work fine, but anything more complicated than that just freezes. It's weird."

"Any idea what's causing it?" Yvian asked.

"Nope," said Yvian. "But I don't think it's natural. Too specific. I'd guess it's some kind of weapon built to shut down the Vore."

"Or the Xill," Mims ventured.

"Either way," Lissa continued, "The tractor beam's not going to work. The field has to be manipulated by a targeting computer. We can't just point and shoot it like a plasma cannon."

"Jump drive?" Mims asked.

"I don't think so."

"Damn." Mims thought a moment. "Any ideas how we can mark the Jumpgate so we can find it again?"

They settled on Trigonometry. Mims flew them a few hundred kilometers from the Gate. Yvian measured and mapped out the star sequence on a piece of paper, then marked the Gate's location in relation to them. Once she and the Captain were satisfied, they turned the ship around and painstakingly angled the ship towards the planet they'd found.

The journey took two days. They had to adjust their course several times, as there was no way to perfectly plot a course by staring out a viewport. A constant watch had to be kept, as they were only guessing at their speed and had no way to predict incoming objects. They slept in shifts, ate in shifts, and spent hour after tense, monotonous hour staring out a viewport. Worst of all, Mims took the beer away.

Yvian understood, of course. Alcohol slows reflexes. They'd need all the reaction time they could get if something happened. A fraction of a second's delay would kill them all. She understood. Of course she did. She might even forgive him. Someday. Maybe.

She was feeling pretty surly by the time they got close enough to take a good look.

The planet was completely covered by the Vore. The silvery sheen encompassed the entire surface. Perfectly smooth, except for one very large mass spiking into the sky. Without sensors, Yvian had no way to measure, but the spike swirled upwards nearly a third of the planet's diameter. The spike, like the rest of the Vore, was unmoving. It appeared to be locked together, a mass large enough to envelope a planet merged into a single piece of metal.

"I'm gonna be honest," Mims grumped. "I don't think the view was worth the trip."

"Are we sure they're dead?" Yvian asked. "This is really gonna suck if they're not dead."

"They're not dead," Lissa told her. "They're just frozen like our computers. Any pieces that make it out of here might come alive again."

"That's gonna be a problem," Mims brought the ship to a stop. "The Vore are nanotech. If a single microscopic one of the bastards gets in or on the ship, we're all dead. We can't scan for the damned things, either."

"So how are we going to get the sample?" Yvian asked.

"Not sure, yet. I was gonna use the tractor beam, but that's not an option anymore." The Captain took off his helmet. "What I do know is we're stationary for the first time in two days. I'm tired, I'm grumpy, and I want beer."

"Beer?" Lissa perked up at the word.

"Damn straight," the Captain stood. "We'll get started on the sample stuff tomorrow. For tonight, we're gonna eat dinner, drink beer, and not do a Goddamned thing else until we've all had a full eight hours of sleep. Any questions?"

Yvian and Lissa looked at each other, then back at Mims. The sisters spoke as one. "Shut up and give us beer."