Whiskey and Warfare

“Aye. Calculating a new course to avoid the debris and its predicted trajectory.” A line skirting the field branched off from the current path on the heads-up. “It will add an hour to our journey. We will still make the rendezvous within the allotted time and will arrive on Xyri four hours prior to Primetri Andelek’s funeral rites.”

Less time to spare than she’d hoped, but it was good enough. Maryn settled back to read more of the news articles until a faint signal keened in a rise and fall of plaintive electronics, like a cry for help. Her head snapped up. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Asteroid fields don't send out distress beacons,” Girl confirmed.

“Oh, no.” Panic started behind her breastbone and tried to spin its way up her throat, but she fought for composure, her palms damp with sweat. The heads-up showed the ship was adjacent to the debris field, well out of range, but ... “There may be survivors,” Maryn breathed.

She couldn't leave anyone out there, like she had been.

Her heart sped up with—dread? Excitement? She wasn’t sure, but adrenaline flooded through her and her nerves quivered with anticipation. “Drop out of FTL, rescue protocol. I think you need to wake everybody up.”

“I agree,” Girl said crisply in her ear. “All hands, prepare for emergency deceleration sequence.” The announcement shattered the stillness of the ship, blue night lights paling to yellow, then white.

Maryn secured her water bottle and empty food container in a compartment beneath her chair and silenced the warning on the instrument panel as forward-facing thrusters roared into life. The initial drag pushed her away from the seat to strain against the harness. If Girl’s summons didn’t wake everyone, that certainly would. Moments after the first braking maneuver, the Merrows appeared, yawning but alert.

“What’s going on?” Scylla ran her hands over her head and raked up purple-tipped spikes.

“We’re approaching the coordinates, but Girl detected a debris field where one shouldn’t be,” she answered, and quickly unbuckled the safety harness to slide out of Scylla’s chair. “It’s not on the charts. The spread suggests it isn’t a natural asteroid swarm. Then we started to pick up an intermittent distress beacon.” The faint digital wail over the comm repeated as if on cue. “There it is again.”

“War debris?” Col had padded up behind them and slipped into her jump seat.

“Girl and I think it’s possible there are survivors.”

“If it’s a battle site, we won’t know what side they’re on,” Scylla warned.

“Does it matter?” Maryn arched one eyebrow as she buckled in.

“Well …” Jac sighed submission as she slid into the copilot’s chair. “It might.”

Col hummed deep in her throat. “There is more to your freelancing than you’ve told us, isn’t there?”

“Maybe a little bit,” Scylla admitted. “Everybody’s strapped in, right? I’m turning off artificial gravity. Emergency deceleration maneuver in three … two … one.”

Maryn’s body strained against the harness as Newton’s law displayed itself more assertively this time. The Girl's programmed rescue protocols kept them in wide, but ever-tightening circles near the source of the distress signal. The braking process took more than an hour until the ship slowed enough to drop into sub light engines, and Scylla turned them toward the beacon’s coordinates.

“Jeeze, the spread is massive.” Jac whistled as she took in the radar display. “That’s got to be more than one.”

“The war made it to the sector sooner than you thought,” Maryn confirmed.

“Whatever this is had to have happened within the last few hours.” The pilot’s hands flew over the instrument panel. Steel shutters over the windshield retracted into their pockets, and they all stared in disbelief at the carnage revealed in front of them. “What the—” Scylla whispered.

The slow-spinning bulk of a fragmented spaceship loomed ahead, a hull lined with dark, empty windows. Flotsam drifted around it in an expanding corona.

It was impossible to miss the bodies floating among the wreckage.