This will be the last chapter that I post until I get further into the story. As the conflict gets higher and more detailed, I need to be able to adjust certain aspects of the story at a whim, without worrying what has been previously released. I anticipate the next chapter being uploaded within the next two weeks or so. Thank you for all of your support so far!

Chapter Seven: Ossuary

ossuary: latin

noun

1. a container or receptacle, such as an urn or a vault, for holding the bones of the dead.

2. a place where the bones of the dead lay.

Two humans, one supporting the other, stumbled through a darkened doorway with a predator shadowing them. Runite, though not overly congenial personality-wise, provided some measure of security for their retreat. He was nearly soundless, but Nasira felt his presence the entire trek. Reassurance was there like a flame enduring in a hibernal wasteland - she wouldn't have to look over her shoulder for an ambush, at least.

They'd returned to the fuselage to find the other two predators standing in one of the seating bays. Marcus was near them, sitting rigid, wary of his guards.

Nasira deposited Edmund in a seat and shoved past Runite to get to one of the staff cupboards. She cracked open one to reveal a stock of first aid kits. She ran back to Edmund, ripping his pant leg at his knee then discarding it.

The gash the alien had made was about four inches long and bleeding copiously. She swabbed it clean and wrapped it with bandages. The burn on his shin was minor, but she spread ointment on it as well. He grimaced as she worked.

"Can you do this?" she asked, holding out a syringe and a vial of what would function as antibiotics and painkillers in his system. He shook his head, a sheen of sweat on his face. She did it for him, piercing the vial with the syringe and then finding a vein, bright blue, standing out against the starkness of his skin.

He lay back, his next word just a whisper.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome," she said, and stood. "Wait here, please. Don't stand up, your bandage will seep."

She walked to Marcus, ignoring the exaggerated way the predators' heads turned to follow her. She sat beside him.

"Do you have any injuries?"

He looked at her, the skin beneath his eyes weathered by age. He did not answer.

"The tail hit you pretty badly. Let me look. Can you hold up your arms for me?"

She helped him lift his shirt. On the side of his ribs and back was a trail of ruddy bruises. At the end was a small cut. She cleaned it and applied a bandage.

"Why are you doing this for me?" he asked. Heaviness weighted his every word.

She continued what she was doing for some time before answering. "Because it's my job."

This was greeted with silence.

She sat back, stuffing the contents of the first aid kid back into some semblance of order. Pretending not to notice as the predators continued to stare, she went back to Edmund.

He was wavering between awake and asleep, but he managed to say, "You sounded like him."

"Who?"

He nodded at Marcus.

Her gaze snapped to him. "What do you mean?"

The blood on his face cracked as he conjured a smile. His voice took on a canny, theatrical tone as he imitated what she'd shouted while wrestling with the parasite. "Edmund, keep your mouth shut."

This elicited a snorting laugh that she didn't know was her own until her hand went up to her mouth. The predators straightened up at the sound, and she hastened to smother it.

"I'm sorry," she said. She distracted herself by wetting a piece of gauze and using it to clean the blood from his face.

"Don't be," he said. "I said it to make you laugh. You summarized the last ten hours of my existence in about a millisecond. I'm Edmund, by the way."

"I'd guessed that."

He was still looking at her expectantly, so she said, "I'm Nasira."

"Yeah. Didn't you hear me say it back there?"

She gave him another good-humored glance before attempting to flatten her expression. The two larger predators had disregarded her laughter, looking on to something more interesting, but Runite's mask remained tilted in their direction.

Nasira shook her head and continued to dab at the crusted blood on his face.

"Does that hurt?" she asked.

"No. I don't think it's broken."

"Well, keep your head tilted forward and hold this here until it stops bleeding."

"'Kay," he said in a silly nasal parody of when he'd had to speak past the blood in his nose. "I can't believe the first time I ever talked to you was after having my nose stoved in."

"You spoke before that." She lowered her tone. "To tell me about Marcus."

"Oh." His eyes darted away. "Right."

She wanted to ask him about why Marcus had done it - why he'd brought the organism onboard in the first place - but she didn't want the predators to hear any damning details that would inspire them to readdress their decision to keep him alive. And why had they? With her gone to save Edmund, Tresses could've easily done away with him. She'd have to wait until…

Until when? She didn't know why they'd spared him in the first place. She didn't even know why they were here. Marcus had done something unforgivable by the state of things, so they ought to have pushed her aside and killed him straight out. But they hadn't. Which meant they were waiting for something.

Maybe Tresses had decided to acknowledge Nasira's responsibility for him. Since they were of the same species, it gave Nasira the right to be the one to dole out justice. She was not eager to mention that Marcus would, if Nasira had her way, go before a tribunal to determine his guilt. Nasira would have little to do with it aside from providing her report on the matter.

She tugged off her boot. There was a tiny cropping of acid burns on her ankle. There was nothing she could do but put ointment on them. Lines of blood crisscrossed her palms where she'd pulled Edmund from captivity. She poured antiseptic over them, her breath hissing as she did, then applied a thin bandage that sealed over the lacerations like a second layer of skin.

Beneath the lid of the first aid kit was a mirror. The line on her cheek from Runite was bloody, but minor. She took care of it as well.

She put her boots back on and stood. Edmund noticed.

"Where are you going?"

"I have to do something."

He followed at a limp. "What do you have to do?"

He didn't let up, even as she turned to leave the fuselage. It seemed he meant to go with her the entire way, so she helped support him so he could avoid putting weight on his leg.

"Earlier, I went up to the forward array but never got the chance to fix it." She omitted why this had been the case, for the moment unwilling to recount the tale and feel again the cold stone of regret that buried itself in her stomach. "We're still not able to contact anyone, but I want to see how far the lifeboat I sent is. It's homing functions are directly connected to the Cavalier, so even without the array, I should be able to communicate with it. Control it, even."

She felt eyes on her back and turned to see one of the predators. In front of it was Marcus. Unsure of what it wanted, she kept going, but the predator - Tresses, she could tell from the dissonance of its roar - forced Marcus forward.

"We're to accompany you, it seems," Marcus said. Nasira looked away in exasperation. With just Edmund, they would be clumsy - she'd acknowledged that when she'd started helping him walk. With Marcus and the predators joining them, they'd be a traveling circus. The hallway had two levels, and further up there was another cloaked predator balancing on the ledge. As they passed beneath, it moved to follow them. She paid them little mind - their presence might dissuade the alien creatures from stalking them in the ducts.

The bridge was still open, the lights over the workstations illuminating the room. Nasira helped Edmund take a seat then went to the command station.

Work half-done greeted her much in the same way an obituary would. This was Captain Uicra's last effort to regain control of the ship. If she went to the engineer's station, she would see what Buhbda had seen as he guided her up to the forwarding array.

She quelled her wayward thoughts and sifted through the computer's functions. The foremost window was dedicated to sending a transmission, but when she tapped it, it reminded her that there was an error with the forwarding array. She hadn't expected it to work, so she moved on.

When she opened the emergency functions, there were several listed. Among them was a lift of lifeboats and their prepping details. Another was the status of the central bunker in bright green lettering. SEALED. Outlined in white were the thirty passengers inside. Her face, previously drawn in contemplation, softened. They were safe. Their levels were good. From here, she had the option to reroute several utility conduits to supply the central bunker, depending on whether she deemed them safe. She had no need to go over them now, so she minimized the window and went to the lifeboats.

They were listed by symbol and numeral - the one she'd commissioned was displayed fifth in the order. She pressed to select it.

Nothing happened.

She pressed it again and held, trying to coax the interface into responding.

It did not.

A hand went to her chin as she thought. Why couldn't she contact it? At the least she should be able to open it's external cameras to try and gauge the condition of the lifeboat itself.

But she could not.

She turned around to make sure no one had seen her pause. Edmund was worrying at the top of his bandage and staring blankly at the counter in front of him. Marcus was leaning against a wall, eyeing the predators, who'd congregated to exchange utterances in their animalistic language.

Nasira turned back to the command station. She tried to override the user identification function. This was the captain's computer - it should have had the highest clearance. Even as the computer granted Prono access, she still could not toggle the lifeboat. The menu remained frozen, the lifeboat's tag grey and unusable.

A flood of windows opened as she toggled a new lifeboat. They showed her the climate conditions, the storage and seating capacity, the fuel levels. The computer was working, but she couldn't establish contact with the messenger lifeboat. Even though it'd separated from the Cavalier, she should have been able to see it. Something was wrong.

She prepped it for departure. She was loath to waste one, but she needed to know whether it was distance that prevented her from finding it, or if when the lifeboats separated they became inactive via the menu.

After releasing the seals on the docking mechanisms, she guided the lifeboat out of its bay. It kept pace with the Cavalier while it was near, but if she let it go, it'd be light years behind them in moments.

Before she could do so, a roar startled her.

Tresses was holding out her arm, upon which her red hologram was projected. It showed in mistakable clarity the port side of the Cavalier and the lifeboat alongside it.

The enormous predator did not want the lifeboat to leave, but any reason she could have for that was not one that overshadowed Nasira's need to get a message to the alliance.

Her back was to the console. Behind her, she nudged the lifeboats controls, managing to make it tumble out of the Cavaliers' path and into space.

Tresses snarled as the lifeboat vanished from her hologram. She looked to Siwili, who immediately began pushing buttons on his own wrist computer.

Nasira turned back to the console, feverishly tapping at the lifeboats' interface to set it on its course before either of them could stop her. There it was, brightening a path through uncharted space. She could see the seating in the interior, the engine. The bay doors. The rounded hull. Over that, she could see an immense brightness that belonged to no sun or star.

What?

The lifeboat's cameras cut out the instant the light reached it, obliterating it. It was soundless. She could only imagine it unfold, the debris blossoming like a flower hung in the black curtain of space. A bold grey line was struck over where Nasira had before been able to access its interface. This lifeboat and the prior one now stood out on the menu as twins, dead, unresponsive.

A stream of curses, half-completed and in a multitude of languages, spilled from her mouth. She pummeled the touch screen, beseeching it to overcome futility and work for her.

But there was nothing to do. The light had wiped the lifeboats from existence. They'd been disintegrated. Destroyed.

By the predators.

When she finally gave up, she did it with no small degree of frustration. She slammed her palms down on the counter top and gripped the edge until her knuckles turned white.

"Nasira?" came Edmund's voice, tentatively.

She whirled on the predators.

"Did you do that?" she seethed. "Why would you destroy it?"

Runite rose up to his full height and a threatening rumble rose in his chest but she took no notice.

Marcus stepped forward, but he was the last person she wanted to deal with. She did not need to talk her way past his oiled manner. She needed to abandon all attempts at diplomacy, for it seemed the only thing these predators deemed worthy of consideration was the heat of emotion, of instinct, of wrath. This violent species could do nothing but complicate their survival and destroy any chance they had for rescue, and she would not stand for it any longer.

She pointed behind her - where, light years away, the lifeboat had just been destroyed - as she spat the words. "Those ships are our only chance of getting anyone to realize where we are! You're telling me that the distress call I sent an hour ago didn't make it ten seconds out? Do you realize that if no one comes to get us that we'll be lost in empty space?" Inside of her was the crushing depths of a singularity - it pulverized her every particle to within a hairbreadth of its capacity as she ranted.

"This ship is infested with an unknown, hostile organism. This ship was at the end of its circuit when all this shit came apart. We have supplies enough for hours, not days, because we were supposed to stop on Thouopro." Her hand clawed down her front as she gesticulated. "Maybe it wouldn't have changed the fact that the organism is here, but at least we would've been in the inner system when it happened. We would've had a chance at military intervention! Was that your doing as well? Did you sabotage the engines and cause those thruster bursts?"

The beads on the crown of her hijab had come askew from her shouting. She tried to readjust them but she was shaking with rage.

How had they destroyed the lifeboats from on board the Cavalier? Were there more of them shadowing them from their own ship? That might give explanation to why they were off-course, and why their forward array was down. Then it struck her.

She looked at the predators, who were lined up as though to oppose her, and imagined their broad silhouettes as though they were still concealed by their cloaking device. When they were concealed, the only way she could see them at close range was the wavering water effect. It was a kind of active camouflage, using some kind of light bending technology. When she went up to the forward array, she had not seen it due to the blackness of space and the meager reflected light from the hull of the ship.

There was an invisible structure physically blocking the forward array. A ship, maybe. The method by which they'd been able to destroy the lifeboats as well.

Marcus stepped forward again, holding his hands out to pacify her. Distantly, she felt ashamed that he was the one to be calm, to be trying to invoke reason.

Her body, wound tight as a spring, did not loosen until the predators dropped their aggressive stance.

She was out of breath, lightheaded. She adjusted the beads on her hijab more carefully, letting their pearly texture soothe her.

Marcus said, "If the xenomorph - that's what we call them, you see, the hostile organisms, it means 'alien form' -"

"Yours," she interrupted, the single syllable like ice chipping. As if her methodical stroking of the beads had never made any headway in calming her down.

After a pause, he restarted, "Yes, mine. If my xenomorph had loosed itself —" he caught sight of Nasira's face — "I'm sorry, if my xenomorph had been loosed in the inner system, our situation could've been even more tragic than it is now. They're the ultimate predators, entirely without conscious. They exist only to propagate their numbers and annihilate anything that stands in their way. If the infestation had occurred within the inner system, every civilization on every planet in the galaxy would've been at risk."

"It's an animal," she said, derisive. "Even animals that reproduce quickly have never been able to take over their betters."

"Take an endoparasitoid," he spoke over her. "Take a wasp. Xenomorphs produce in much the same way. Aggressively, in great numbers, and always at the cost of their hosts."

"Such species have never posed a threat to lifekind," she retorted. "Even considering their size, they are animals. If Adrara lined up, wall to wall, to contain these creatures, you mean to tell me that they could not be dealt with?"

"In the same way a military could put down some rampant zoo animals? These creatures may not hold the same intelligence as you and I, but they were engineered to survive. Their exoskeletons, blood, their temperaments. Agility. All powerful defensive attributes. Their natural weapons - a pharyngeal jaw, bipedal and quadruped gaits. They have the motor control to manipulate even the finest of triggers. They are capable climbers and swim like crocodiles. They may survive for minutes at a time in a vacuum," he said. "They are, most assuredly, a threat. To you. To me. To everything."

"And you brought them aboard," she said grimly. "Tell me why."

He looked towards Edmund, and she raised her voice, directing the words at his profile. "And stay away from your son, Marcus. I'll not have a repeat of our earlier incident."

Edmund looked up. "Son? He's not my father."

This took Nasira aback. "Isn't he?"

"Marcus worked at the company with my father," Edmund said, glancing at him. "He died on Uataislurn."

Her aggression dropped away - she was awash with guilt. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize."

And then something pricked at the back of her mind.

"What…I'm sorry to ask — what happened?"

Marcus stiffened, and, across the bridge, Tresses and her companions looked straight at him, intent on his answer.

It was Edmund who explained.

"He was killed. I meant to tell you by the lifeboats…"

"To tell me about your father?" she asked.

"No. About Uataislurn."

"What happened?"

"He was killed by xenomorphs. There were xenomorphs on Uataislurn."

A snarl came from Runite, and Nasira was momentarily distracted.

"How…how did they get there?"

"The company brought them. They were kept in the — I don't know what they're called — the holy sites for their holiday. Ubrone, I think. There were thousands of them. They spread across the planet's face in hours. Nothing could have stopped it."

And, as Nasira knew would happen, he had no choice but to look at Marcus and finish.

"Someone intentionally seeded the entire planet."