Trac met her eyes. His blank gaze still managed to convey that he wasn’t happy.
“I should…” he began.
“You have to protect the ship and our passengers,” she said. “We’ll need a ride out of here.”
All they needed was a route. She stared at the flashes coming from the vessel that now showed up on their tracking.
“Tim is very tough,” Trac said, “despite…”
He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to. Riina knew his humanity made him vulnerable in a way that was new to them both.
“He needs me to have his back,” she said. “Is our cloak working?” At Trac’s nod, she added, “I’ll gear up, and you can drop me near his location.”
“Do you wish me to engage with the intruder?”
Riina hesitated. She wanted him to blow it out of the sky but, “We don’t know who the good guys are or if there are any good guys out there.”
They might need that ship’s help. Or its databanks. Be a pity to blow it out of the sky and then find out they could have used it.
This time, when Trac answered her, it was on a private comm. It was better that Drun didn’t know everything they were thinking. He might panic. Or try to stop them, though she didn’t see how he could manage that.
She wished he’d go back with his people in the bay. She couldn’t quite tell where and how he fit into their command structure. If there was one. They all appeared to be civilians except for Drun.
But Drun hadn’t overtly taken the leadership role until he’d demanded to join them in the cockpit. But had that been a leadership move? Or a power move? An annoying move? It could have been that.
Riina ignored him now, heading for the bay. Back inside, she was aware of all of them watching her change out of her regular gear and don what she’d never worn before.
Assault gear.
She knew, without being told, that their passengers were growing unsettled as she strapped on weapons and checked her various suit’s levels.
She was bluffing. Oh, she knew how to put it on. It was part of her training. She even knew how to point and shoot. She just hadn’t done it before.
She dropped her faceplate, so that when she turned to face them, they wouldn’t see her fear, her uncertainty. The only thing that kept her going was knowing that Tim was out there alone, with enemies on every side.
They were a team. She should never have let him go out there alone. She would not make that mistake again.
Her suit’s comm activated.
“Cloaked and lifting off now,” Trac said.
“I have picked up the trail again,” Veirn said. “I believe they made a stop in this system. That increased the levels of the element I am using to track them.”
“Do we have any information on this system?” he asked.
“Nothing that would indicate why they stopped here,” Veirn said. “It is curious because it is, or was, within range of one of the older outposts, but that outpost went out of service.”
Kellen checked the data Veirn displayed on his console. It had gone down while they were all still in their long sleep. Had it been destroyed? It could have been either malicious or natural.
Many of the outposts had been damaged by space debris of one kind or another.
However, it was odd that there was no data previous to when it went offline. That seemed to indicate deliberate destruction.
“I am detecting life signs on one of the planets.” There was a pause, then Veirn added, “It is an inhabited planet, not a minor incursion.”
So, the entity had stopped here? Kellen frowned.
“No sign of the electro-magnetic interference that Arroxan Prime experienced?”
