SHIMAZU-DOMINIGO CUTTER

KWAKU ANANSE

LINKED-ASTEROID COLONY

NAOSHIMA

AUGUST 2188

CAPTAIN AKILAH NWOSU SHIZUKA was not a fan of tight spaces. She was not claustrophobic, she simply didn't like any space in which she could not turn around, and being jammed into an engine housing was not how she'd wanted to spend her afternoon. The ship's kinetic barriers had inexplicably failed, and had allowed a micrometeor to punch through the cowling and take out a fluid regulator, which caused the engine itself to overheat far too quickly and stall them just short of their destination. She reached awkwardly behind a mass of power feeds, looking for the one that turned off the fuel to the reactor so she could patch the hole. Her index finger felt a switch, and she poked it. A bank of lights flickered over her head. A whine that made her clench her teeth suddenly sprang up.

"It's not that one," a voice told her over the comm. Eisenhauer, her weapon tech.

She grunted in annoyance, tapped it again. The lights went out. The whine stayed. She tried the one next to it. Her back ached from old wounds. Cargo runs should have been less taxing than facing a sea of husks, but somehow, this irritated her more.

"Wrong, too." He sounded amused.

"Why," she asked him, not bothering to hide her irritation. "Am I, the captain and owner of this ship, doing this when I have perfectly adept techs on my payroll?" She tried the next one. Another set of lights flickered. The noise died down.

"That's the one."

"I'll rephrase that," she told him, pulling a patch-kit from a pack strapped to her thigh, began to apply it. "Why am I, the captain and owner of this ship, doing this when I had perfectly adept techs on my payroll?"

"Now, now, Cap'n," a feminine voice said from behind her. "He's a dick, but some of us are where we're supposed to be. And you're the only one that fits in there."

Shizuka sighed. Katherine Jha, her engineer. Her large coffee-coloured eyes scanned the inside of the housing. A native of the megapolis Chennai, of Tamil Nadu in southern India, she was straightforward and a certified expert in pretty much anything she felt like doing. She dressed like the rest the crew, save for the dagger-shaped bindi between her eyebrows.

"Katie… I hate tight spaces."

"I know, Cap. You can come out now. I've got Kensai doing an EVA to plug the hole." Kensai Pavlonius, her turian pilot.

Shizuka pulled herself out of the housing, pulled her gloves off. She reached for her jacket. On her right arm, done in white ink, a "7" stood out in sharp relief against her dark skin. Jha often wondered why she had it, but never quite knew how to ask.

"What – do we know – knocked out our barriers?" Shizuka asked as she pulled the jacket on. "I thought we had the damn things overhauled at Ventura Station before we made this run."

Jha nodded as she fired up her omnitool to run a diagnostic.

"We did. According to every single scan I've run since, they should be working perfectly." She frowned. "This scan included."

"We can't move a bloody centimeter without them." Shizuka huffed.

"We may want to find out in a hurry," Eisenhauer told her over the open comm. "We've got a turian cruiser vectoring at us."

"The hell? What are turians doing here?"

"Couldn't say. But they are definitely heading to us, doing a good clip too. They're quiet. No ship idents. Nothing."

Shizuka pushed past Jha, told her to hurry and made her way to the small control bridge. Eisenhauer, broad and bushy, gestured at the screen when she entered. On it, growing steadily larger, the familiar shape of a turian warship.

"There you go. Big as life."

Shizuka frowned a heavy frown. This was deep in Alliance territory. There was no reason she could think of for a turian cruiser to be anywhere near this sector, especially considering how stretched thin they already were – turian fleets had been ripped to shreds.

"You sure they're coming at us?"

"Either that or they don't see us here. Neither is necessarily something good."

"Have you tried hailing them?"

"I'd rather you were here for that." He shrugged.

"Now you remember I'm in charge." He cycled through the standard hails and they waited.

"Hey, people..?" Kensai, on the comm.

"Yes, that's a turian ship."

"Don't look at me. I'm legit." A pause. "I'm done. Coming back in."

To her left, a once-dark bank of lights re-lit themselves. Finally.

"Barriers are back online."

"Nice job, Katie."

"Nothing I did. I just don't get it."

Shizuka gritted her teeth. Too many damn mysteries.

"We'll need to get a full diagnostic run when we get to the colony. The company won't like it, but it is what it is. Are we going to make any money this trip?" She nudged Eisenhauer. "Well?"

"Nothing yet." The ship kept coming. Kensai stepped into the bridge, nodded at her. She gestured him to his seat.

"Let's get out of its way, at least." She went to her own station, checked her board. "Don't like this at all."

"It could be going to the colony." Eisenhauer speculated. "With all the metallic crap floating around from the mining and war, we could just be blending with the debris."

Jha chose then to enter.

"Possible. They'll notice us when we fire up."

"Let's go." Shizuka ordered impatiently.

The Ananse smoothly fired up and Kensai took them out of the cruiser's path. They watched it rumble by. If it had noticed them at all, there wasn't any indication.

"They would have ploughed right through us. They didn't even slow a klick." Kensai's mandibles jittered in agitation. The ship continued on its dead-straight course for the colony.

"Uh… Boss…?" Eisenhauer turned back to her. "They're in the inner traffic lane for the colony now. They should be slowing down by now."

"And?"

"They're not. Scans show they've actually increased their velocity."

"What!? Hail the colony!"

"I've been trying since I saw the speed increase! They're broadcasting a jamming signal – they have to be – I can't get anything through!"

It didn't take long. The turian cruiser was at full speed when it hit the main asteroid of Naoshima colony. The explosion shattered it and smashed the great booms and tubes that linked the other asteroids to it. With the destruction of the cruiser, comms came back. Emergency broadcasts suddenly flooded the ship, but there was nothing the Kwaku Ananse could do. The comms abruptly died as the smaller asteroids collided or disintegrated due to torsional forces.

The silence on the Kwaku Ananse was deep.

"What…" Kensai said after what seemed like a long time.

"Why?" Jha asked.

"Ed? Anything?" Shizuka asked Eisenhauer.

"Nothing. Just beacon pings. Maybe a couple of lifeboats. Hard to triangulate with all the debris and eezo clutter."

"Do what you can."

The Kwaku Ananse spent several hours sifting the debris. In the end, they found several dozen functioning lifeboats, about a hundred people from a colony of thirty thousand. The Ananse towed them all together so they could be linked. No one had any answers.

They had just linked the last lifeboat when proximity sensors pinged. They all jumped as if stung.

"What now?" Eisenhauer grunted, still shocked by events. Everyone was as edgy as hell. A quick one-two on his board identified it.

"Alliance cruiser. This one, at least, is broadcasting ship idents. Also general hails. It's the Surat."

"They're a little late," Jha groused. Shizuka laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Let them know what we've seen and have been up to. Send them our scans of that ship and what it did."

It turned out that the Surat already knew. Within moments, teams had been dispatched to retrieve the occupants of the lifeboats. The Ananse was commended for its actions. Captain Mark Evigan of the Surat even called to congratulate them personally.

"Don't feel too badly," he told them. "There was really nothing more you could have done than you already did."

"I appreciate that." Shizuka told him. "Will you need us personally for…"

"I think your scans will be enough." An aide whispered in his ear. He looked vaguely surprised and then nodded. "You are Akilah Nwosu Shizuka, yes?"

"Uh, I am, yes…" She wondered where this was going. She had no criminal record, well, not now, at any rate – war amnesty and all that.

"Good. As per my orders: Commander Akilah Nwosu Shizuka, N7 Special Shock Forces Vanguard, you are hereby ordered back to active duty. You will turn over command of your ship to your second and report to the Surat. Councillor Hackett would like to speak with you. Now."

The shock of her crew was debatably almost as great as the turian collision had been.