“Be peaceful from behind that snow pile!” Miles yelled as the bright lights began to change color and pulse faster.
The group still only widened the circle. Miles grabbed Lira’s hand and pulled her behind a pile of ice boulders and then yanked her down next to him. He thought he heard T’Korrin squawk. Perhaps that sound encouraged the others to follow suit.
Just in time, the wide bare stretch of ice flow emptied. Something began to heave up from the ice as light stabbed down from the ink blot.
Whatever it was coming out of the ice intersected with the incoming and was sucked into what looked like a dark funnel. Some of the sucking didn’t go well as flying pieces of something began to splat onto the surface around them.
And on them.
Miles scrapped a piece off his forehead and looked at it.
“It’s Vorthari,” he told Lira. “At least, a piece of one.”
“It was coming up,” Lira said, her eyes wide in a suddenly pale face. “But how did they know?”
“I don’t know,” Miles said. He looked up. Who was up there? And where was the Garradian ship?
9
“Houston,” Lt. Dish said, “I think we have a problem?”
“Excuse me?” Riina said.
Tim was happy Rinna had said it. Who was Houston?
“Sorry, it’s an Earth thing. It means, well,” Lt. Dish gave a shrug, “that we have a problem.”
“A large problem,” Trac said from his corner of the bridge. “What manner of entity is this?”
Captain Kellen had already slowed their forward momentum and altered their trajectory as soon as their sensors had flagged the unknown entity seeming to arrive just ahead of them.
Was it a ship? It didn’t look like a ship, though for a brief instant, their sensors had caught a shape before it began to spread out.
Tim’s ship, the Najer, had been a lot of places and they had observed a large quantity of ship types. There tended to be certain similarities among space going vessels. Similarities that fell into classes, such as shipping, battle, scout. Of course, each species’ ships had peculiarities, but they still tended to look like, well, ships.
This, whatever it was, did not look like a ship or ships. He wasn’t sure what it looked like.
“Blobs,” Lt. Dish said. “Are we sure they are ships?”
“Miasma,” Riina said. “It is oddly formed and indistinct. If we were to observe this…object…elsewhere, I would postulate that it might be a quasar, cosmic dust, a gravitational wave…it’s too small to be a dark galaxy, but there are some indications…”
She stopped.
“It’s almost bubble-like,” Lt. Dish said. She too rose, as if sitting made it harder to think.
Tim unstrapped and rose, but he experienced no change in his lack of comprehension.
“It is blocking light from the planet,” Tim said. Perhaps standing had helped? If his comment was helpful? He did know how planets that were inhabited tended to look from space. Large clusters of occupants created clusters of light that even showed through storm clouds. But darkness was slowly spreading across the surface of Arroxan Prime, blotting out all observable light.
“Tim’s right,” Riina said, flashing him a quick, anxious look. “The lights are going out. Or our ability to see them is being mitigated.”
“I should go down,” Trac said. The skitterfin wrapped around his neck lifted its head and looked at him with large, dark eyes.
His words also caused everyone on the bridge to turn and look at him. Tim felt a stab of something. If only he weren’t in this human body. Though it wasn’t completely human.
“We could go down,” Tim said. He might have emphasized the “we.”
“You would slow me down,” Trac said. The skitterfin turned to stare at Tim. Did it agree with Trac?
