Chapter Ten

The lights flickered red across the shattered bridge as the emergency systems came online, revealing that the forward half of the bridge was carbonized wreckage, seared by when the bridge atmosphere had been turned into a plasma cloud. There were seats holding parts of the crew that had been left when the short trip through jumpspace had torn them apart at a molecular level.

The ship tumbled, bleeding air and energy and debris. Two vac-suits, thankfully only worn by corpses, spun into the void.

"Ship computer cores are out. Completely fused, rotating backups from cold storage," Chakuva panted, the meds in his system keeping him from going into shock despite having two of his arms ripped away in a haze of freed molecules being spread across light-years. "Right before they fused out they reported that something was physically touching them, even though that is impossible."

"It spoke," Lektat moaned, taking his hands off his ears. "That ship, it spoke." He had blood on his palms from where he'd covered his ears.

Nakteti looked at her helmsman. "What did it say?" she asked, remembering what she'd seen on the screen.

"It told me to run, run home," Lektat said. He glanced at his computer as it came up. "Jumpdrive is charged."

Screens came up and Chakuva gagged as the ship suddenly swung away from the behemoth and accelerated.

"Secondary cores are fused, only one deep storage core remains. Liquid coolant is operating at only 30% of efficiency. There's some kind of resonance in the gel," Chakuva gasped. "I've never seen software, firmware, or hardware damage like this before."

The ship suddenly went dark again as the sole remaining lobe died. Before it went, it screamed across the speaker "ONLY ONE!" and imploded.

"All systems on local control," Chakuva said. He coughed. "Get us, get us into jumpspace."

"Unidentified ship is closing," Vekan said, raising his head and coughing. "Most of my scanners are either destroyed or the software's crashed. What readings I am getting don't make sense. I'm having to rely off of optical measurements and estimates."

"What do you mean?" Nakteti asked, feeling a rush of joy that her scan-tech was still alive.

"Putting it on your display," Vekan said.

Nakteti looked at the screen and jerked back. According to the scanners what was coming straight at them was a burning skull of her own species, jaws stretched in a silent scream of agony, flames puffing from the jaws. Written over and over was "THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE OF US" across the screen in twisted and writhing script.

"Lock down the ship, total EMCON, rig for silent running," Nakteti found herself giving an order she had learned about in captain's school but never thought she would ever need.

Nobody but pirates and pirate hunters had used it in centuries.

"Rigging for silent running," Chakuva said, taking over the communications station from his damage control panel. He looked back. "To be honest, Captain, there isn't many systems that are still up. Any worse and we're going to have to go to the jump core and tell it directly what we want," he gave a weak laugh.

"Unknown ship is still gaining," Vekan said.

"That's impossible. It's too big to get that kind of acceleration," Chakuva said, shaking his head. "It's too big to even move with any known drives! It's the size of a moon!"

"Get out and tell it that," Lektat said. He reached across his displays and typed an order, bringing close range passive scans onto one of his. His eyes widened and he suddenly yanked his joysticks, spinning the ship again on all three axis.

Nakteti was positive that Lektat was trying to create a fourth axis for the ship to move on.

"MANY INCOMING!" Lektat cried out. "JUMPSPACE JUM..."

Nakteti expected him to hit the emergency jump button again. It would discharge the entire jumpcore, it was risky, but it would throw the ship into jumpsace for a few moments and drop the ship at the closest star.

It also damaged the jumpdrives and the jumpcore.

The ship moved again into jumpspace. Nakteti would be asked to describe the sensation of being exposed to jumpspace, explain the eye watering flow of color, the sense of mass moving past you, the feeling that time was stretched out.

All she could do was stare at it, watching vapors slowly spill from outside the ship, through the damaged bulkheads, and into the bridge.

"We can't stay here long," Nakteti said. "Turn us toward home."

"NO!" Lektat shouted. Nakteti looked at him and he shook his head. "No, we can't lead it back. If we lead it back, it will do to whichever world we bring it to what it did to our home."

Nakteti felt like she crumpled up inside of herself.

YOU WILL BE CONSUMED HERE

Everyone on the bridge screamed as the shrieking voice made itself heard by vibrating the bones of their skulls. When the voice ended Vekan looked up, the fur around his eyes suddenly white with stress.

"It's behind us..." he whispered.

"That's impossible, you can't follow another ship in..." Nakteti said.

Her display flickered to life, writhing twisting code appearing around the edges of the window that displayed the rear hatch optical sensor.

The massive black ship was approaching in jumpspace.

And gaining.

In her defense, Nakteti's people were herbivores who wouldn't pass up the odd tasty insect or smaller creature now and then. She was not used to being prey, she wasn't used to feeling doom rumbling behind her whispering twisted promises of death and suffering into her brain, onto her displays, into her soul.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

Nakteti shrieked and hit the emergency jump icon.

While still in jumpspace.

To the surviving crew members felt like they were being turned inside out. Others felt like they were being stretched across infinity. Still others felt as if they were sucked into themselves until they were little more than the size of a proton.

For a third of the crew, how they felt is what happened.

The ship dropped out of jumpspace and Nakteti felt the ship shudder, saw the icons on her screen, of the jumpdrives failing and the jumpcore venting into the ship.

There was nobody there alive anyway.

"Any ships, anyone, help us!" Vekan said over the comms.

"Where," Nakteti coughed. "Where are we?"

"Astrogation and navigation is down, no telling," Vekan coughed.

"Hanging from a branch by a broken thumb," Chukava said weakly.

For long moments the only sound to Nakteti's ears was the sound of Vekan begging someone, anyone, for help and Chukava coughing.

"Jumpdrive is charging," Lektat said. "Slowly, but the core is damaged and discharged into the ship."

"Casualties?" Nakteti asked, dreading the answer.

Chukava shook his head. "Everyone in the surrounding three decks was already dead."

Nakteti opened her mouth to reply when the scream sounded out again and the monitors all displayed THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE over and over and over.

Lektat pulled the ship around, trying to coax every iota of speed he could from the damaged and battered ship. Diving for the nearest celestial body, a gas giant that was yellow streaked with red.

"Unknown vessel at one point two million kilometers and closing," Vekan said, his voice sounding weary and defeated. "It jumped in inside the boundary again."

Nakteti thumbed the icon for shipwide broadcast. "Prepare yourselves," she said, tears rolling from her eyes. "We are about to join our ancestors, our shipmates, and our families that were on the colony."

She leaned back. "It has been a pleasure," she said.

"We're receiving a transmission, multiple wavelengths, multiple bands," Vekan said, suddenly sitting up.

"What is it?" Nakteti asked, privately wanting to tell Vekan to order whoever it was to flee.

"May I be of assistance?" The voice, calm and assured, asked her in Unified Civilizations Standard.

The other part of the message was in text.

//Goodboi will help newboi//