What May Come

Please see chapter 1 for author's notes.

WARNING—Violence in this chapter. Nothing too graphic, but you've been warned.

Chapter 10: The First Engagement

Harlan and Radu checked the wheel catches on the chairs they were in, while Goddard moved to sit on the couch. "What do you think Jacie and Aslinn are going to do?" Harlan asked.

"Lie through our teeth," Aslinn responded over the comm.. "Jacie's teeth, anyway. He sounds like a Spung. And this is one of those cases where having a ship that looks like a piece of junk should work for us…what harm could we possibly do anyone?"

"Comm system is going to one-way so I can answer these guys," Jacie reported. "You'll be able to hear us, but we won't hear you."

Radu bit his lip in concentration as hisses and snarls came through the speakers. "They want to know what we're doing here…why they're taking a salvage ship into a more settled area instead of out where there would be work."

"Have they got a good excuse?"

"Repairs…the engines need special—I'm not sure of the next term, covering or plating, maybe?—because they're so old. They want a visual…Jacie says the communication array was damaged in a solar storm. They…" he trailed off, feeling himself go pale.

"What?" Goddard asked.

"Th-they say they have reports of fugitives being transported out of Spung territory through this sector of space…they're requesting permission to board."

"That's not good," Harlan commented. "I'm guessing they wont take no for an answer." The ship shuddered as a transport tunnel locked on. "Apparently not."

"Change of plans," Aslinn's voice rang over the comm. "We're back on two-way. Radu, you speak Spung?"

"Yes."

"Good, come up here, you're now our translator."

"What about Jacie?"

"I'm a runaway slave…it's an automatic death sentence if they catch me. So I'm going to be hiding for the foreseeable future. Commander, it might not be a bad idea for you to join me. You look military."

"Where are we supposed to hide?"

"In the secondary command post…I'll show you when I get there."

"Harlan, if you'd pull up a game on one of the computers and do your best to look utterly bored when the Spung are taking their tour…" Aslinn suggested.

Jacie came into the room as Radu unhooked his harness, preparing to go to command. Ignoring the trio, he headed for the trunk on the far side of the cabinet. Some sort of secret hatch was built above it, and with a few precise taps a blast door none of them had seen swung open. He nodded to Goddard. "Come on, we only have a few minutes to get settled in."

Radu heard the hatch seal as he opened the door to command, and caught Jacie's faint explanation about redundant setups and how a command post build on the front of a ship was going to be the first thing targeted so they'd better have a backup somewhere. "What do you need me to do?"

Aslinn turned and gave him a grim smile. "How fluent are you?"

"I don't know…I learned in classes, but I've never used it with a Spung before."

"Great. Keep it simple, I guess…I understand quite a bit, but I can't speak all that well. Makes my tongue itch. If anyone asks, you're Jacie, my co-pilot, and Harlan is hitching a ride with us to visit relatives. Stupid excuse, but the manifests we have on file are pretty clear—two crewmembers." He glanced at the panel in front of him. "They're at the outer airlock, requesting permission to enter. Wonder what they'd do if I denied?" Fingers ran lightly over the sling he still wore, and then he unbuckled it quickly and tucked it into the nearest trunk. He didn't take the brace off, but the injury was much less obvious. "The last thing we need to do is give them questions," he explained. "Shall we go greet our guests?"

Sparing a moment to wish he could refuse, Radu nodded and moved to follow him out the side door and into the hallway. "Do you know how long these inspections take?"

"I've never heard of a ship this small getting inspected before…it's always the bigger cargo ships they target. Things that cost the empire money." He shrugged. "Here goes nothing."

The main airlock swung open, and Radu fought to keep the surprise—and horror—off his face. Two Spung stood in the doorway, both slightly larger than Aslinn. He was familiar enough with their rank badges to place one as a commander and one as an engineering lieutenant—that one held some sort of scanner, and Radu hoped that blast shielding would be enough to confound it. The third figure was smaller, no bigger than Rosie. With blonde hair tied back, hanging nearly to her waist, and spiral ears. Or at least they'd been spirals once…deep, old scars cut across the whorls, and the tip of one was missing. She stood slightly behind the Spung in charge, staring straight ahead and showing no emotion. Radu forced himself to concentrate on the situation at hand as Aslinn apparently realized that he wasn't in shape to form a greeting and invited the three onto the Rockhopper himself. His accent wasn't too terrible, Radu noted, but then again it hadn't been a particularly complicated statement to make. The Spung turned their attention to him, and he tried to keep his voice steady as he introduced himself. If the Spung were surprised to see a human and an Andromedan as the crew, they hid it well—the only expressions he could make out were distaste and, at least towards himself, condescension.

They spent a few more minutes going over the details of their 'travel plans', Radu translating Aslinn's words to the Spung and theirs to him, although he suspected Aslinn understood most of what was being said considering the speed he was responding with, and at least one of the Spung probably spoke Standard. The Andromedan girl…she hadn't made a response yet.

"If you'll come this way…"

The tour was beginning, and he fell into step behind Aslinn, allowing the Spung to follow. Having them at his back was making his shoulders twitch, but he couldn't change positions in the narrow hallway. There wasn't room for them all in command, although the lieutenant insisted that they open the door to the escape pod so he could scan inside. Apparently the blast shielding did disrupt the sensors. The next stop was the bunkroom, and the commander looked decidedly suspicious at the multiple beds. Aslinn dismissed it, saying they sometimes did short-range shuttle tours, but Radu didn't think he looked convinced. The lieutenant's scan of the bathroom and attached escape pod seemed a lot more detailed. And then they were moving on to the rec room.

Harlan looked up as the group entered…Radu didn't recognize the game on the screen in front of him, but then he didn't play video games often. "How's it goi…" Harlan trailed off to stare at the Andromedan girl for a few moments. "Uh, going, how's it going?"

Aslinn shrugged, keeping his attention on the Spung. "This is our galley and rec room…keeps us occupied when we're on runs."

"What is your function here?" the lieutenant asked Harlan.

"We're giving him a ride," Radu put in as soon as he told the human what they were asking, before he could make up one of his complicated excuses.

The commander frowned. "Is that a normal function for this ship?"

"Hey, we're friends and they were heading that way anyway," Harlan responded after Radu translated.

"Indeed." He looked as if he was going to say more when his communicator chimed. "Tseros."

"Commander, we're having trouble scanning inside their cargo bay. Matai went down to engineering to—" there was another word that Radu didn't recognize, probably relating to the ship's sensors—"but I think you'll have to do it manually."

Harlan raised an eyebrow at Radu, who repeated the part about the ship not being able to scan inside the cargo bays and needing the commander and the others to do it while they were onboard.

"That's not actually possible," Aslinn replied. "The cargo bay isn't pressurized…I can't open the hatches without making whichever of us is on the other side greasy spots on the far wall."

"Then you'll have to open the bay doors to space," the Spung said with a smug grin, clearly expecting Aslinn to refuse.

"That would be acceptable."

Disappointment flicked across his face—obviously he'd been hoping that's where people were hiding. And then the Andromedan girl spun towards the back wall, when the hidden room was. "Heartbeat!"

Radu didn't even see Aslinn move, but a weapon of some sort appeared in his hands and a pulse from it caught the commander in the chest and sent him to the ground before anyone could react. The girl flung herself across the room with a snarl, and he dove sideways. "Jace!"

Harlan may not have understood what the girl had shouted, but Aslinn's intent had been clear, and he spun to kick the lieutenant's weapon out of his hand before he could use it.

Radu turned away from that fight as a second kick caught the man in the stomach and sent him to his knees. Harlan would be fine. Aslinn on the other hand…he'd lost his weapon in the first dive, and was now doing his best to dodge the girl's charges. Either she didn't have a weapon or she'd forgotten about it—Radu wasn't going to argue the point. He maneuvered behind her, aiming a blow at the nerve cluster at the base of her neck. It never landed—she came around with a backhand that sent him to the ground, and followed it up with a kick to the ribs.

A chair bouncing off her shoulder distracted her…must have been Harlan, Radu thought as he struggled to his feet. Aslinn was over on the other side of the room. Unfortunately, he was the one she focused her attention on, and the redhead threw himself over the couch as she flung the table in his direction.

"Leave him alone!" With the nastiest snarl Radu had heard yet, Jacie jerked Aslinn behind him and glared at the girl. A very short, very brutal, fight followed…just about every piece of furniture in the rec room took damage, the computer consoles were rendered unusable—assuming anyone could figure out which pieces of scrap had once been computers in the first place—and Goddard and Aslinn had been forced into the hidden room while Radu and Harlan crouched as close to the galley wall as they could to avoid the combatants. But in the end it was Jacie who forced himself upright…slowly, but he made it…and the girl who remained on the floor with her neck bent at an unnatural angle.

"Jace?" Aslinn asked worriedly.

"I-I'm all right. Just…stay back right now." He shook his head.

"Yeah, no, that's a bad plan. Sit down, brother." With some effort, Aslinn lifted the couch back upright, and then glanced at the body of the Spung commander lying in front of it, and the girl's off to one side. "On second thought…bunkroom." He glanced at the lieutenant's crumpled form as they moved towards the hatch. "He dead?"

"Just unconscious," Harlan replied.

"Toss him in the escape pod and seal the door, just in case, all right?"

"Are you two all right?" Goddard asked as the two of them moved into the other room.

"I'm all right. You okay, buddy? Looked like she took you down pretty hard."

Radu rubbed his jaw. "I think it's just a bruise. My ribs are sore, but…I don't think they're broken."

"If they have a medical scanner, we should make sure of that. Why don't you two go check, and I'll put all three of them in the pod."

Radu knew he should offer to help, but…the sight of the dead Spung didn't bother him a great deal. Of all the dead bodies to see, better a Spung than anyone else. But the Andromedan girl disturbed him. "I didn't think she'd hear them," he commented quietly as they moved to join the other two in the bunkroom.

"Hm?"

"The blast shielding distorts sounds, muffles them, but it doesn't stop them. I could hear their heartbeats fine, if I concentrated. But her ears were so scarred up…I didn't think she'd hear them."

"It looks worse than it actually is," Jacie commented quietly from his seat on the far bunk, where Aslinn was cleaning a gash on his shoulder. Probably from when his body had been used to crush one of the monitors. "I mean, we probably can't hear half what you can, but it doesn't stop us from functioning."

"We?" Radu asked.

"They did it to all of us, after we hatched."

"But then, your ears must be…" Harlan trailed off at Jacie's confused look.

"Yes." He pushed the headband aside to reveal think scars cutting across the spirals. "It's the easiest way to identify an Ashrach."

"Why did you think I asked to see your ears?" Aslinn asked absently, moving on to a nasty bruise on Jacie's forehead.

"I…I guess I didn't think about it."

"But when you knew he was Andromedan, you yelled for Jacie and somehow he heard you," Harlan objected.

Aslinn frowned, and then his expression cleared. "The 'if you can hear me' comment? I was talking to an open commlink, I just didn't know whether Jacie had his end turned on. Did you want the scanner?"

The four of then were silent for a few moments while Radu was checked for broken ribs—a negative, fortunately—and Aslinn finished his ministrations. At which point Jacie handed him a sling with a frown. "You're lucky it didn't break again."

"Hey, I might have banged every other portion of my body, but I was careful not to land on that wrist." He tried to grin at Jacie, who tried to grin in return, but both expressions were lacking.

Radu couldn't think of anything to say in the silence that followed, and apparently neither could Harlan. The awkwardness lasted several moments, until Goddard came in to join them, holding the commander's communications device. "I think we'd better figure out what to do about that scoutship fast…this started beeping a moment ago."