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My body ached from my time in stasis and hitting the machine, but I was no stranger to agony. I set the pain aside, picked up the crate with care, and dropped it a few feet away from the captain’s unmoving body.

“Emergency alert,” a computerized voice stated in Alliance standard, its voice echoing in the cargo bay. “Impact by debris has caused a hull breach and significant damage. Life support and other crucial systems are failing. Captain, please proceed immediately to your emergency refuge and seal the door. The ship will maintain course to its destination. Repeating. Impact by debris has caused a hull breach and significant damage. Life support and other crucial systems are failing. Captain, please proceed…”

I cursed and crouched to touch the captain’s face. “Captain, can you hear me? Where is the emergency cabin?”

She did not stir.

I had to get her to shelter. Doing so risked compounding her injuries, but it was either move her or leave her here to die.

Would she save my life if the situation were reversed?I wondered. Probably not. She did just try to blow a hole through me. Now I had to keep her from dying or face surviving this calamity and the journey to our unknown destination alone.

And I didn’t even know her name.

As gently as possible, I scooped the captain up in my arms. The scent of her blood filled my nose and made my antennae twitch. The air had already become thin. The hull breach sucked it from the ship much faster than the failing life support system could replace it.

“Computer,” I called, hoping it would respond to my voice. “Where is the emergency refuge?”

“The captain’s cabin is the designated emergency habitat,” the computer said. “Ship’s port side, aft section. Follow the lighted path. Emergency alert. Impact by debris?—”

“I heard you, Computer.” Careful not to jostle the captain too much, I ran from the cargo bay. In the corridor, the red emergency lights flashed in a pattern that directed me to my left. “Computer, what is the captain’s name?” I called.

“The shipNebula Traveleris under the command of Captain Gen Drae. Please proceed immediately to the emergency cabin and seal the door.”

At a run, I followed the red lights down one corridor, turned right, and down another until they led me to an open doorway and what was unmistakably the captain’s quarters.

The spartan interior matched the utilitarian appearance of the rest of the vessel. The main room contained a wide bunk, desk, chair, and food preparation station. Above the captain’s bunk, a large window showed a view of stars passing at hyperspeed. To my left, an alcove led to the washroom and what appeared to be storage for clothing and other personal belongings.

Carefully, I settled her on the bunk, and then ran back the way I’d come to a door labeledMedical Bay. By the time I reached it, I struggled to get a breath.

I stuffed two emergency medical kits with everything I could get my hands on that I might need to treat the captain’s injuries, plus a couple of large medic’s coveralls I thought I could use as clothing.

My journey back to the captain’s quarters seemed to take four times longer than the trip to the medical bay. I gasped for air and pulled myself along the wall a few steps at a time. Within a minute, I guessed there would be no more air to breathe on the ship other than in the emergency cabin.

Just before I reached the captain, a ship’s maintenance robot with a half-dozen arms rolled past, presumably on its way to the cockpit to take control of the ship. If it recognized me as an intruder, it must not have been programmed to attack.

“Keep us on course and alive,” I gasped.

The ’bot’s head rotated one hundred and eighty degrees to face me as it continued without pausing. “Affirmative,” it said, and disappeared around a corner.

I staggered inside the captain’s cabin and fumbled for the door controls. They were labeled in Raxian—not surprising, since many freighters this size were built in Raxia’s busy shipyards. I pushed the one labeledEmergency Seal, hitConfirm, and collapsed to the deck.

On the bunk, the captain wheezed, her face and lips tinged blue.

The door slid closed, locked, and sealed. Immediately after, I heard and felt a welcomewhooshof air as the cabin pressurized. A ship’s designated emergency habitat typically had its own self-contained life support, climate system, stores of food and water, and power source. If the captain survived her injuries, those resources would keep us alive until we reached the ship’s destination—assuming we suffered no more calamities in the meantime.

A few fortifying gulps of air gave me enough strength to drag the medical bags to the bed. The bunk was surprisingly oversized, apparently made to accommodate species larger than humans. For all her defiance and anger, the captain was about average height for a human female. She appeared small in comparison to the bed and almost fragile—a far cry from the warrior I’d met only minutes before.

In the short time it had taken for me to get to the medical bay and back, her blood had soaked through her uniform and bedding and puddled on the floor beside the bunk. When I ripped her jumpsuit open, I let out a hiss of dismay and anger at the sight of her badly lacerated torso. The crate had come so very close to killing her instantly. Another half-meter to the right, and I could have done nothing to save her. As it was, her survival was anything but certain.

I brushed loose hair back from her face. “Stay alive, Captain,” I said.

Captain Gen Drae. Killer of polite men and stowaways and probably many others besides, who smelled like heaven and home to me.

I dumped the medical bags out on the bunk and went to work, fighting to save the life of the woman who’d just done her damnedest to end mine.

chapterthree

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