“Jeez, how long did I sleep?” She rarely awoke at night and could count on both hands with fingers to spare how many bad dreams she’d had since hooking up with the boys.
His playful smirk warmed her. “Not that long. You were exhausted. Not just playing yesterday, but accumulated stress. And frankly, since I had watch last night, I could use a nap. So how about we just stay in bed today?”
“Do you really think I’m going to say no to that?”
“I didn’t think you would.”
Chapter Eighteen
Emi sat in the command chair, her legs drawn up under her, reading a book on her hand-held console. It was nearly two a.m. in their daily cycle. The boys were all asleep after their poker game, leaving her on watch.
The blinking indicator caught her attention a split-second before the alert beep.
She sat up, her heart racing. She’d never had a real-life notification during a watch before. This felt bad, very bad. With shaking fingers, she touched the screen, and a message box popped up.
Sensor indicates sentient signature.
Fuck. What the hell did that mean?
She couldn’t think. Then another message appeared.
Sensor reading, signature closing fast.
She punched the com panel, straight to the cabin. “Aaron? Guys?” Aaron’s sleepy voice. “What’s wrong, hon?”
“Can you come up here? There’s something on the sensors I don’t understand.”
He was immediately awake. “I’ll be right there.” She’d no sooner sat back than a klaxon sounded and the whole screen flashed red.
Aaron ran onto the bridge a moment later, in boxers and pulling on his shirt, barefoot, wide awake now. She moved out of the command chair and he slid into it.
“Fuck!”
“What is it?”
He shook his head. She knew that meant both that he didn’t know and to hold off on the questions.
The twins ran onto the bridge, Caph carrying his shirt, Ford carrying his shorts, both trying to dress.
“What is it?” Caph asked, sliding into his chair, alert and in crew mode. Ford went to the weapons panel and activated it, all business.
“Large vessel,” Aaron said. “Full power to defenses, back off secondary systems.”
“Roger,” Caph said, his fingers flying over his panel.
Emi froze, despite the literally hundreds of hours in simulations.
She watched, panicked, as Aaron barked orders at the twins and they responded immediately with acknowledgements or requested information.
Aaron glanced at her. His voice softened, calmed, the same voice he used with her that night at the Dry Port. “Em, take the secondary weapons controls from Ford.”
She nodded, sliding into the chair and activating the panel as feeling slowly returned to her numb limbs.
Just a simulation, she chanted in her mind. Just a simulation. This is just a sim, stay calm. Just a sim.
It wasn’t a sim, but maybe if she thought that hard enough, it would keep her focused.
Whatever it was, as soon as it picked them up on their sensors, it changed course and headed right for them. It was big and would intercept them in an hour at current speed. It wasn’t carrying an ID
beacon, meaning it was unidentified or possibly hostile.
How Aaron maintained his calm, she didn’t know. “Can we jump, Ford?” he asked.
Ford shook his head. “I need three hours warm-up from current sleep mode. I shut it down to save the extra energy since we weren’t close to a solar source. We jump with it cold, it’ll burn out the circuit board trying to backwash the energy.”
“Can we out-run it?”
“It’s doing L-6,” Caph said. “The fastest this crate will go outside of jump mode is L-5. We can run, but it’ll catch us, and we don’t have anywhere to run to. We don’t have the energy to run L-5 and weapons and defenses and life support and warm up the jump engine at the same time.”
Aaron activated the com. “Unidentified vessel, this is DSMC
Exploration Vessel Tamora Bight hailing, over.” Silence. After two minutes, Aaron tried again, recording the message to auto-hail over a wide variety of frequencies, hoping to snag a valid one. Twenty minutes later, the ship was still closing with no response.
The tension on the bridge thickened, suffocating. Aaron looked at Emi, and in the same calm, soothing tone said, “Go to the cabin, get dressed, and bring us full uniforms.” He tossed her a key card. “Then I want you to go to the arms locker, get us each¯including you¯a side arm, and bring us extra plasma energy cartridges for them, okay?”
She nodded and sprinted to the cabin, her hands fumbling her belt as she dressed, trying to find everyone’s clothes and not grab the wrong ones or forget anything. Emi raced back to the bridge and dumped them on the floor. Before she could leave again, Aaron snagged her arm and kissed her, distracting her the way he always did, even under these circumstances.
“Em,” he whispered, “it’s okay. Just a precaution. You’re doing great.”
She nodded but felt anything but great. She bolted for the weapons locker and had to try three times to get the key card in the lock before it opened. Her fingers didn’t want to hook the holster clasp to her belt, and she nearly burst into tears trying to get it right.
Taking a deep breath, she imagined Aaron’s calm voice. The boys weren’t panicking—neither would she.
She raced back to the bridge. She’d been gone maybe five minutes, but they were all fully dressed and at their stations. She handed out the side arms and extra cartridges and returned to her seat.
Then a tell-tale beep sounded. The men froze.
A low voice growled through the com, sounding like it was running through the translator circuits. “Vessel Tamora Bight, this is Granz executive vessel. You will maintain course and prepare to be boarded.”
Aaron tapped the com. “Granz executive vessel, we are a DSMC
exploration vessel, not a military vessel. Under interstellar treaty¯”
“We are not a treaty race. Your crew will not be harmed.” The com link went dead while Emi fought a wave of panic.
Aaron was tense, as were the twins, but they hid it well. “Em,” Aaron said, “look them up, see if there’s anything on them. Caph, what do you have?”
He shook his head. “Their sensor is overriding ours, or their defense shields. Energy pattern nothing like I’ve seen, can’t penetrate it. All I know is they’re a big fucking box, bigger than us by four times.”
Nerves and adrenaline sent Emi’s fingers flying over the computer, trying every possible spelling she could think of and coming up with nothing.
“Look up non-treaty species, cross-reference with this sector,” Aaron calmly suggested.
She did, then a notation popped up: Unknown species, intelligent race, restricted contact, DNC-2 standing orders.
She sent the notation to Aaron’s console. His face tightened.
“Okay, hon. Thanks.”
“What? What does it mean?”
He’d sent it to the twins’ consoles, and Ford spoke. “Do Not Contact.”
“What does the two mean?” she asked.
Caph answered, his face hard. “If someone’s taken prisoner, no one’s coming after you.”
Just a sim…just a sim…
The vessel slowed as it approached. Another klaxon went off.
“Tractor beam,” Ford said, his fingers manipulating settings, trying to prevent life support overloads. “Way too strong to fight it.” Aaron nodded. “Then don’t. Power down the engines to ready-neutral, let’s not burn them up.”