He felt Riina’s hand on his shoulder as she said softly, “What if there were other energy barriers in different locations? When they went down, these canines were able to enter areas that had been blocked off to them?”
Tim wasn’t sure why it mattered.
Tim had bare warning, just long enough to turn and protect Riina, before the ground between them and the canines exploded, dirt and debris rising in the air.
He thought he saw a few bodies flying, too. Tim had a sense of something larger in the air—something with wings—but that’s all he had time for.
The ship that had fired the shot lurched once, then went spinning out of sight, its engines screaming from the attempt to recover from the impact. At least the pilot had tried to help. Or shoot them himself. Tim wasn’t entirely sure.
“You’re still cloaked, right?” Tim muttered into the comms.
“Affirmative,” Trac said.
“What is it?” Riina asked.
“It is a large avian,” Trac said.
“I did not have Jurassic Park on my bingo card,” Lt. Dish said.
The debris cloud began to settle, but it was Tim’s sensors that registered the remaining canine’s slinking back into the shadows.
The large avian settled into the clearing left by the explosion. If Tim hoped it hadn’t seen them, it was a faint hope. The avian was facing them, the slow movement of its wings brushing against the ground and reaching to both sides of the tumble of debris.
Its red eyes regarded them from either side of a beak that looked like it could peck through metal.
The ground underfoot rumbled slightly. From the ship’s impact with the surface, Tim guessed. He hoped the pilot managed a controlled crash. It did appear he had tried to help them.
The other ship, the one that had been firing on the big alien was nowhere in sight, nor was it visible on his sensors.
The silence from Veirn began to tell on Kellen. If asked, he’d have said he had no problem traveling without other humans on his ship.
It wasn’t about that, he told himself. It was about his missing humans. And the lack of input from the AI. Humans, he reminded himself, needed input, they needed data—or the pretense of data.
And he missed—he half frowned—the sense of sharing the worry perhaps? That could be it.
He felt useless. All he could do at present was worry. He’d resisted the temptation to break the silence. He knew Veirn would inform him if there was anything to tell him. He knew this.
The AI wasn’t like a human who talked to hide their worry. It just didn’t talk unless it had something to say.
The words, the questions, the worry felt thick in his throat, as if he needed to cough them up to breath freely again.
“How are we doing?” he asked, finally, when he could hold them back no more.
“The data is interesting,” Veirn said, surprising Kellen.
Had it been hoping for a conversation, too?
“The level of the element changes. Based on previous observations, I believe it changes as they are going in and out of jump. I’m starting to collect enough data to postulate that it also changes based on duration out of jump.”
“So, they stopped in some places longer than others?” He was pretty sure that’s what Veirn was saying, but it didn’t hurt to ask.
“I believe so.”
The confirmation didn’t help that much, since they didn’t know why the entity was stopping anywhere.
“I believe we are approaching another drop out point,” Veirn said. “The element is occurring in more density than previous stops, however.”
“That’s…curious,” Kellen said, resisting the urge to ask Veirn what it meant. It couldn’t know and it would just have to smack him down.
