“Cap? I’m picking up on a signal. It’s faint, but it’s definitely there.”

  Fitz’s gruff voice cut through the tension on the bridge of the Vantage like a blade. He sounded relieved, but Niall had steered crews through far too many ambushes to be able to ignore the twisting of suspicion in his gut.

  “Where is it coming from?”

  “The battleship sized craft in the centre of them, sir. It’s UGC equipment—a basic distress ping. It’s weak enough that I’m only able to detect it now because we’ve moved closer.”

  “Life signs?”

  “None on the Clarke, sir, and those scanners aren’t penetrating the hulls of those other ships.”

  Niall drummed his fingers on the armrest of his captain’s chair and ran his eyes across his crew. They were all experienced and knew well enough the options he was weighing. Something was massively awry here. The entire situation screamed trap of some kind, but the Clarke was showing no signs of being boarded or even damaged, which pirates or mercs almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to avoid.

  The distress signal was classic bait, but what was accomplished by luring a boarding crew onto that ship? Human or not, the wear and damage to these craft told him they’d been out of commission for centuries, if not longer, so ploy by some new species seemed unlikely. Which left the possibility that what was left of the Clarke’s crew was aboard that alien ship, where their scanners couldn’t find them, possibly even clinging to what little oxygen their flightsuits had left.

  The safe play was to pull out. Call and wait for reinforcements. If any of the Clarke’s crew were still alive, they’d run out of oxygen and die horrible deaths, but it would shield his own crew from the risk of ambush until the UGC could investigate in force.

  Fuck safe.

  Niall stood, eyes narrowed and flexed stiff hands into and out of fists. Those men and women had families. People who were waiting for them. Futures. If there was even the slightest chance one of them was still alive, he had to act. Flightsuits could maintain air flow and suit integrity for a startlingly long time nowadays, and the Clarke’s last comm message had been a little over 36 hours ago, with no report of these strange ships. There absolutely was a chance.

  When he looked up, Fitz met his own gaze with a sardonic grin. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I do believe our dear Captain is about to announce his intention to do something stupid.”

  There was a ripple of uneasy laughter among a few of the more experienced crew, but the jibe had been enough to settle Niall’s own reservations about his decision—which was likely Fitz’s intent in the first place.

  “I won’t lie, our First Officer’s assessment may not be wrong. My gut tells me we’re being led by the nose into a trap, though I’ll be damned if I can see where from. On the other hand, some of our boys may just be on that ship needing our help, and I don’t intend to leave that to chance. I’ll ask for two volunteers to accompany me as a boarding party, whilst the rest of you prep the Jump Drives and stand ready. If we are being led into a trap, you jump and transmit everything back to Command. No hesitation. If you volunteer, you must be ready to face that eventuality. I won’t risk the more lives than absolutely necessary here.”

  “Yes, sir!” his crew responded in almost perfect unison, and he nodded in satisfaction.

  “Volunteers for the boarding party?” He asked, and Fitz immediately rose, a savage smile on his gnarled face.

  “I’d like to see you try to stop me, Cap.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he chuckled. “Besides, it wouldn’t be right to make the rest of the crew responsible for you—I like them all far too much to put them through that pain. Anybody else?”

  Three of the crew’s security contingent volunteered, including the Chief of Security, Choudhary, but Niall waved him away almost immediately.

  “You’re needed here, Dev. You’ll have command while me and Fitz are off-ship. I need someone experienced and decisive enough to make the right call if there’s an issue.”

  He turned to the other the other two volunteers, with a considering eye. “Bakare. You served on the Victoria prior to this, correct?”

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  The woman in question, dark-eyed and serious, nodded in the affirmative. “Yes sir. For three years.”

  He’d had little reason to speak to Bakare in the three months she’d been aboard the Vantage, besides the brief moments of praise for tasks well-completed, but he’d certainly noticed her. The discipline she showed in the gym and training room was second to none, with much of her off-duty time being spent honing herself to a razor’s edge. He’d seen her shoot, and seen her move through the tactical drills, both pretty much flawlessly.

  But what really sold him, was her prior service on the Victoria. That ship was stationed on the edges of Eclipse-ran Independant territory and had garnered a bit of a reputation for especially daring boarding actions against them.

  “Your mission record was exemplary, back then. You’re in. Now, let’s suit up. The command is yours, Choudhary.”

  A little less than half an hour later, the small boarding team watched the strange battleship grow closer through partitioned air lock window glass. Niall couldn’t help but stare in fascination at the drifting chunks of metallic debris and ship remains that cruised past them during their approach.

  That, and the hulking vessel that held the signal they were going after, were made of the same strange black-grey metal. At a glance, inexperienced eyes might mistake it for regular metal, but even the most cursory closer inspection would say differently. Even on the most crisply designed UGC ships, the most sleek and most modern, had panels. Places where the metal used to construct the ship’s various parts had been bolted and joined to eachother to make the shape of it.

  Not these. Each ship, each chunk of scrap, bore no sign of any such designs. Even the enormous central craft seemed to have been made in one piece of glimmering black. He would have thought it impossible, were it not for the evidence before his eyes.

  Their target was probably the most complete of all the desolate craft within this floating grave, likely because of its far greater size. Its original shape was the most easily distinguishable thanks to this, too. It had been magnificently sleek, made up of several sections of sloping curves that seemed strangely organic. If Niall had to place it, he’d have said it resembled a leviathanesque version of an earth whale, its body hanging ominously in the celestial ocean.

  More complete though it was, it certainly bore the teeth marks of whatever predator that had ambushed it. All across that strangely hull, twisted rents had been torn through it, the sleek metal shredded and blown inwards, revealing the network of ruined corridors and rooms beneath the hull’s surface.

  They made for one of these convenient access points now, seated just beyond the Vantage’s air lock. Niall hoped the other two couldn’t tell how tense he was. At least on the surface, it didn’t seem they had. Fitz had sprawled himself across three seats, his head resting on his pack, shotgun nestled across his chest. He gave the impression of sleep, but Niall knew better. His breathing was too measured, too controlled.

  His First Officer had been this way for the entirety of the two decades they’d served together. He never seemed to suffer from the same nerves, the same fear that Niall did, but his apparent relaxation was as much of a sham as Niall’s. It wasn’t so much fear, as total readiness. Even here on the Vantage, his fingers periodically twitched towards the trigger, ready to move at the slightest provocation.

  Kehinde Bakare’s nerves were only a little more apparent. Her game face was mostly impeccable as she ran through her gear check for the third time since they’d arrived here. The process, like everything else she did, was thorough and clearly well-drilled, performed smoothly enough that Niall was sure she’d be able to do it blindfolded.

  Of course, that was they main give away, besides the noticeable tightness in her shoulders and jaw. Her attention to detail was immaculate, and she’d been confident in the state of her equipment the first time around. Now, the process was simply therapeutic. Repeated, practiced motions—something to distract the mind from the fact that there was a chance they were about to step out into space, straight into an ambush there was no retreating from.

  Still, there was no hesitation in her dark eyes, and for that, she had his complete respect. He was sure she’d be able to find it in his own.

  “Captain, that’s as far as we take you,” came Choudhary’s voice over their flightsuit’s comm channels. “Scans remain consistent. No other presences in-system, and our systems still can not penetrate the ship’s interior to scan for life signs. We’re also picking up residual celestial energy spikes, but not enough to be a rift.”

  The Clarke had been sent to investigate a Celestial anomaly, so that was no real surprise, and had there been any Abyssal presence here, there would still be a rift without a Starbound to close it. Taking a deep breath, Niall stood, nodding to his team also rising behind him, and each of them returned it to show their readiness.

  “Thank you, Choudhary. Disengage air lock safety controls.”

  “Copy that. Good luck, Cap.”

  A panel beside the airlock door beeped, and a second part of the panel lit up, allowing Niall to punch in a code. The door hissed, and the warning klaxon blared loud to match the flashing of crimson light as the room decompressed, and the door slid across revealing a chasm of vast, open space between him and the gaping wound in the side of the ship.

  His HUD flickered into life, showing him the readings for a full tank of oxygen and fuel, and he raised a gloved hand, showing three fingers to the pair behind him. Two fingers.

  One finger.

  With a long, shuddering breath, Niall Reed stepped off of his ship and into space, suit thrusters blazing to life, propelling him towards the wreckage that hopefully held the stranded crew of the Clarke.

  Alive or dead, he was going to bring them home.