“We’ll fight, Captain,” I said. I don’t know why I said it. I wasn’t thinking about fighting at any point before. It just came up in my brain at that moment. It was like Lee Han said: To Hell with these guys, whoever they were. And if that meant fighting them with sticks, that was better than nothing.
I looked around the bridge and saw people nodding. We were all ready for a fight.
Thao smiled at me and then nodded, as a way of letting me know my comment had been registered and appreciated. Then she turned back to Han, who was not smiling. “But,” she said to him.
“But they already have knocked out our power in a way we couldn’t and didn’t track,” Han said. “They’re jamming our communications and external sensors. That says to me they have more up their sleeves. Even if they don’t, if we fight them and repel them we’ll likely take losses and additional damage to the ship. We’ll all end up on lifepods just to survive. In which case whoever they are”—Han motioned outward, signifying our attackers—“can still take the ship without any of us on it. In which case, we’ve risked everything for nothing.”
Thao turned to Bolduc, who was the pilot on duty. “Any chance we could skip out of this?”
“No,” Bolduc said. “We entered this system near a planet. Under the best of circumstances we’d need three days to get to skip distance.”
“We can’t skip without engines anyway,” Han said.
“When can we get them back?” Thao asked.
“Eller estimated twenty hours,” Han said, speaking of the chief engineer. “Our emergency power is going to last six. We’d still have to get the crew to lifepods. Whoever stayed would find breathing difficult until the power’s completely back.”
“No matter what, we lose the ship,” Thao said.
Han paused an almost infinitesimally small amount of time before replying. “Realistically, yes,” he said. “Even if whoever is attacking us did nothing, we’d still have to get nearly all the crew to lifepods. And I don’t think it’s realistic to assume that whoever is attacking us will do nothing. They’ve already done enough.”
Thao sat for a moment, silent. Ocampo and everyone else on the bridge waited, conscious of the timeline for a response.
“Fuck,” Thao said. She nodded to Womack. “Tell them we understand their terms. The airlocks will be open within the hour. We’ll signal when the crew is in the cargo hold.”
Womack blinked, swallowed, and nodded. She turned to her console.
Thao turned to Han. “Tell the crew. We’re under a deadline here.” Han moved.
Then Thao looked over to Ocampo. “Well, Mr. Ocampo. I’m beginning to think I should have refused your request.” Ocampo opened his mouth to reply, but Thao was already ignoring him.
* * *
The three creatures approaching Captain Thao wore black, were armed, and had knees that went the wrong way. One had something resembling a handgun, and the two others had longer weapons I assumed were automatic rifles of some sort. A larger squad of the alien creatures held back and fanned out through the cargo hold, getting good vantages to fire into us, the Chandler crew. There were about sixty of us, totally unarmed. It wouldn’t take them long to go through us, if they wanted to.
“What the hell are they?” Chieko Tellez whispered to me. She was standing next to me in the group.
“They’re Rraey,” I said.
“Not friendly,” she said. “Not counting these ones, I mean.”
“No,” I said. The Colonial Union didn’t spend a lot of time advertising specific battles, but I knew enough to know we’d kicked the Rraey’s asses pretty seriously more than once in the last decade or so. There was no reason to believe any of this was going to end well for us.
The three Rraey reached Captain Thao. “Identify your pilots,” the center Rraey said to her. It spoke in its own language, which was translated by a small object clipped to its clothes.
“Tell me why,” Thao said.
The Rraey raised its weapon and shot Lee Han, standing with the captain, in the face. Han lifted in the low gravity and took a long time to fall to the deck.
“Identify your pilots,” the Rraey said again, after most of the shouting from the crew had subsided.
Thao remained silent. The creature raised its weapon again, this time at her head. I considered stepping forward. Tellez suddenly grabbed my arm, guessing what I was thinking of doing. “Don’t you fucking dare,” she whispered.
“Stop it,” someone said. I followed the sound of the voice to Secretary Ocampo. He stepped forward, away from the Chandler crew. “There’s no need for that, Commander Tvann.”
The Rraey turned its head to look at Ocampo. So did Thao. I think she realized, like I just did, that Ocampo had called the creature by name and rank.
“Secretary Ocampo,” Tvann said, nodding its head in salute. “Perhaps you would be so kind as to identify a pilot for me.”
“Of course,” Ocampo said. Then he pointed into crew members, directly at me. “He’s one. Take him.”