“You never talk about it.”

  “No point. It’s the past.” I stood and crossed the room to enter the sonic shower. Captain’s quarters had their perks. Slightly larger than the other officers’ quarters and it had its own shower.

  When I stepped out, she slipped out of the bed to take my place. Hela and I had been together for six months and I wondered what Interstel was going to say about it. There were no policies forbidding our relationship, but it was frowned upon back at Starport.

  The Calibur hadn’t been back in port for six months and we were coming in fully stocked with cargo bays full of tungsten, platinum, and plutonium. We had some endurium but it was needed for fuel to keep working the systems. We found a good world that I logged for a colony since the last trip home and there should be some MU waiting for us when we got there.

  It had been a good run and we would be able to get some upgrades for the Calibur.

  “Maybe enough to get those engine upgrades,” I said softly.

  “That’ll make Jas happy,” Hela said as she pressed against my back and her arms encircled my waist. “But you need to quit woolgathering. If you stand there naked much longer we’ll end up back in the bed.”

  “You’re right,” I said with a smile. “Very tempting, but Teila and Zelos might mutiny if I don’t get there for my shift on time. Hopefully, the two of them haven’t come to blows yet.”

  “Why did you schedule them at the same time?”

  “The ship is set to random shifts. It just worked out that way.”

  “And the Captain couldn’t change it?” She pinched me.

  “Captain shouldn’t have to change it. They can work it out or I’ll find a replacement for one of them.”

  “They’re both very good at their jobs,” she said. “Teila is one of the best pilots the Academy ever produced and Zelos is a hell of a science officer.”

  “And I’m hoping they’ll work through whatever issues they have. I’d love to hire a medic instead of hiring a science officer or a navigator. MD-345 is a good medic but he’s limited to his programming. He’d make a wonderful assistant to an Elowan medic.”

  “You think we can afford an Elowan medic?”

  “It’s possible. As long as we don’t run into problems between here and Starport.”

  A short beep came from the console on the wall.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.” I pressed the answer button. “Danec, here.”

  “Sir, we’ve picked up something on the scanners. It looks like a ship, dead in space. No distress beacon. It was pure luck Zelos caught it on a scan.”

  “I’ll be up in five, Teila.”

  “Yes, sir,” Teila Londie said.

  I turned and kissed Hela. “Looks like you better get a team together. If it’s a ghost ship, we may be able to salvage it.”

  She pulled out of my embrace slowly. “No rest for the wicked. I’ll get a squad of security androids.”

  “We’ll do a scan first, so you’ll have a little time to get your team ready. I’ll let you know as soon as we get some facts.”

  She nodded and pulled her uniform from the closet then began to dress.

  “Stop watching and get your own clothes on,” she said. “Unless you plan to go to the bridge like that.”

  “Pardon me if I enjoy the scenery for a moment.” I grinned.

  “That’s fine cause I’m going to do the same,” she said and motioned toward the closet.

  I stepped onto the bridge at just under the five minutes I’d quoted.

  “You’re usually much faster, sir.” Zelos Kan said with a smirk.

  “Might have been just a little distracted,” I said.

  “I bet you were.” Teila chuckled.

  “Alright,” I said with a smile. “How close are we?”

  “We’ll be close enough for a detailed scan in three minutes,” Zelos said. “It is definitely an Exploration Frigate.”

  “Hela is putting together a boarding party. This could be one hell of a find, but I sure hope the crew are still alive. Dead in space is not a pleasant way to go.”

  “I’ve never found a ghost ship before,” he said.

  “I came across one on my first cruise,” Teila said. “They had vented the ship rather than starve to death. I wasn’t on the boarding party, but the images were awful.”

  “I can’t think of a worse way to go than to run out of resources in the middle of nowhere,” he said.

  I agreed with that. It would be a bad end. Whatever we found on that ship, I had a feeling it would be ugly.

  “Commencing scan, sir.”

  I sat back in the chair. It would take at least fifteen minutes to do a comprehensive scan.

  The light above the airlock turned green.

  “Heads up,” I said and reached for the lock controls.

  One of the androids stepped in front of me and Hela laughed. “You do not lead the boarding party, Danec Pol.”

  I stopped trying to pass the android and sighed.

  She stepped past me, right behind the last android. “Androids first. Captain last.”

  I couldn’t see her crooked grin inside of the helmet, but I knew it was there. I chuckled and followed her into the airlock. After our lock closed the outer door connected to the ghost ship’s outer door. One of the androids entered the emergency code that Zelos had pulled from the computers and the door cycled, then slid aside. I’m not sure what I expected, but it looked like any other airlock. At least until the inner lock opened after we sealed the outer behind us.

  “That doesn’t look good,” I said.

  “Not good at all,” Hela agreed.

  The androids entered the passage that was coated in some sort of green substance. It wasn’t quite liquid; it didn’t stick to the androids’ feet.

  “You ever seen anything like that?” Hela asked.

  “Not that I can recall,” I said. “Be careful as we move into the ship. It looks biological.”

  “It looks like a crystal-based substance,” she said.

  She followed the androids into the passage that led back to the cargo pods and engines.

  “Bridge or engines?”

  “Let’s check the bridge first,” I said. “We can run through the whole front section and work our way to the back.”

  “Gotcha,” she said and ordered the androids to turn right and begin clearing the ship.

  We followed them as they entered the other sections at the front of the Firmament with an odd sense of familiarity. Her name had been on the airlock hatch. Aside from the green substance, it could have been the Calibur.

  I pointed at the hatch to the ops section. “All the hatches are jammed open with that green stuff.”

  “I see that,” Hela said. “There’s no way to close off any of the areas so far.”

  “I don’t like this at all.” My hand dropped to the pistol at my side and I drew it. “Proceed at code yellow.”

  All of the androids drew their weapons, as did Hela. “They spotted no life signs from the scans.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” I said. “I got a bad feeling.”

  I reached around and pulled the other handgun from my back holster. Its butt was attached to a hose that ran to one of the square packs on the back of my suit.

  “Is that a flamer?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You brought a flamer?”

  “What?” I shrugged. “So I brought a flamer.”

  “What in the world did you think you would need a flamer for? We’re inside a ship!”

  “I don’t know, maybe I want to barbecue something for din—”

  I knocked her aside and pulled the trigger on my laser. A large greenish spike protruded from the chest of the android right behind her.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she asked. Then she saw past the android that was being yanked forward into the theatre. “Holy hell! Fire, Danny!”

  The scene in the theatre was right out of a nightmare. A creature backed away from the hatch with our android. Another leg pierced the android and ripped it in half.

  “Retreat! Back to the airlock!” Hela ordered. “Androids are rear guard! Open fire!”

  I pointed the flamer into the room and pulled the trigger. The nozzle of the pistol erupted with a forced stream of chemicals that ignited immediately afterward. A stream of flame spouted twenty feet into the room and hit the creature squarely.

  It screamed. The sound was loud enough to send me reeling backwards and another android stepped forward to pour laser fire into the thing. It had a large central body and more legs than I was comfortable with. I stepped back to Hela and we backed toward the airlock.

  “I don’t see how that thing could get out of the theatre,” I said. “The body is too big.”

  “Did you see the back wall? The pile of skeletons?”

  “Yeah,” I said as we came within sight of the airlock.

  Then there was another scream.

  “Shit, shit, shit…”

  The scream had come from the back of the ship. I looked down the long hall to see hundreds of smaller versions of the creature we had seen in the theatre. There were some bigger versions behind them.

  We charged into the airlock and the front of the horde of creatures engulfed the androids. I pointed the flamer out of the airlock door and pulled the trigger again. Hela was at the controls. She shut the lock as we saw pieces of our androids flying out of the pile.

  The door closed just as a glob of the green substance erupted from one of the creatures toward us.

  The lock closed just in time, and I turned to Hela.

  “Don’t you even say it,” she said.

  “That’s why I have a flamer.”

  “I just told you not to say that.”

  “Oh, that? I thought you were telling me not to say we’re going to need some new androids.”

  “I meant that, too.”

  “You’re going to have to work on those communication skills, honey. That’s the only way this thing we have is going to work out.”

  She raised her hand, made a rude gesture, then cycled the airlock to board our own ship.

  “Break the lock,” I said. “We’re on board.”

  “What happened, sir?” Zelos asked.

  “They have an infestation. I want you to hack their systems and vent the ship.”

  “That’s hard to do with all of the safeties on the hatches, sir.”

  “Just open the lock. All the hatches are open.”

  “Umm…”

  “Just do it, Zelos.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I watched the exterior viewers as the atmosphere erupted from the airlock along with hundreds of the green creatures. The larger ones had broken apart with the turbulence of the decompression. I watched in satisfaction as the pieces joined the smaller creatures in the vacuum of space.

  “I’m not too anxious to get back over there,” I said, looking at the others on the bridge. We were examining a detailed scan of the Firmament. “But look at those engines. Class Five. We can cut our travel to a third of what we have now.”

  “We’ll have to go back,” Hela said. She pointed at a spot on the hull. “Look here.”

  “She’s got missile launchers.”

  “I saw the video shot from your helmet cams,” Teila said. “But we can use those upgrades. We’ll need to clean her out and use the grapples to latch onto her.”

  “Definitely have to do a sterilization,” Zelos said. “We can’t risk bringing those back to Starport.”

  “True,” I said. “We only have two more security androids so we’re going to have to do a lot of it ourselves.”

  “I’ll wake Trivett and Jas,” Hela said. “I’m guessing we’re all hands on deck for this one.”

  I nodded. “Everyone will be over there except Teila for the first shift. After that, we’ll set up a schedule for working the Firmament.”

  “Probably have to burn that green crap off the inside of the ship. I noticed your flamer did a lot more damage than the laser. We’ll need to keep suited up for the whole project.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. Everyone takes flamers and lasers both. We may need them for more than cleanup if all of the creatures weren’t blown out. I really wish the androids weren’t taken out. They would get the job done a lot quicker than we will.”

  “We use the chits we’re dealt, I suppose,” Zelos said.

  “Alright then.” I turned from the others. “Let’s get to it.”

  I kept seeing the spiked leg of the creature impaling the security android in my head as we prepped to go back over. How easily that could have been Hela or me was my top thought as we reached the airlock again and locked onto the Firmament.

  I’d had some close calls since heading to space but this one had been different. It’s one thing to command a ship in a battle. It’s another thing altogether when it’s right up in your face like this had been.

  I had a flamer in each hand as the locks opened again.

  Where I had shot the flamer the first time as we were escaping showed some cleared deck. It appeared to have disintegrated from the flame.

  “At least we know the flamers work,” Hela said.

  “May as well start right here,” I said and stepped up between the two androids. “Once this passage is cleared, we’ll work our way through the ship.”

  The androids moved forward and turned to the right and left to guard the passage for us to work.

  “Hang on a minute,” I said, noticing one of our first security androids still sitting in the right hand passage. “Thought these guys would have blown out. Android, are you functional?”

  “Thirty two percent functional, sir. Legs are nonfunctional, sir.”

  “We’ll get you out of here,” I said. “Jas! We got one of the androids you need to take back.”

  There was a chittering from behind me that my helmet translated. “Affirmative.”

  The Velox stepped forward and used his front appendages to lift the android and place it across his back. Jas Ferrik was large for his species. He had to duck to enter the hatches and preferred to stay down in Engineering. He was pretty excited about the chance to get those Class Five engines, though.

  “I will return.”

  I nodded and turned toward the right passage. I engaged the flamers and swept them across the deck. The flames left a brownish green powder in their wake and a green smoke as the residue burned.

  “We’re going to have to vent this every so often,” I said as I heard another flamer ignite in the passage going back toward the crew quarters and cargo.

  “Zelos, let the android take position down the passage,” Hela said.

  “Gotcha.”

  “Trivett, you follow the captain.”

  “Will do.”

  Talos Rivett was our communications officer. She could understand most alien languages and over twenty different dialects from the races we were familiar with. Hela had started calling her Trivett from the second she heard the name.

  We worked our way forward to the theatre. The huge creature was gone, well, mostly gone. One huge leg was still attached to a bulkhead with some of the crystalline substance. It had tried to anchor itself only to have its leg ripped from its body.

  Trivett gasped and I turned around. She was staring at the skeletons that were covered in the substance.

  “This was an ugly way to go,” I said. “That’s why we don’t pick up any of the damned lifeforms we see. You never know what the hell you’re getting. I’m assuming they captured one of these to get the bounty back at Starport.”

  “You’ve seen this before?”

  “I’ve seen something like this. It was planetside. They were hunting one of the big predators on one of those ice planets. Figured they would make enough MU to cover the whole trip. Well, they may have been hunting it, but it was hunting them, too. Killed a third of the crew before they got away from it.”

  “Did they kill it?”

  “Captain was pissed. He hit the damn thing with a ship to ship missile after the landing party got back. It had been immune to the tranquilizer they’d taken with them.”

  I engaged my flamer across the skeletons and burned the green pile to ash.

  It took close to a week to cleanse the ship of the infestation. Most of it would have been fine to let the grunts back at Starport take care of, except the eggs we found attached to the bulkheads of the cargo pods. If those had hatched and gotten into Starport, it could have been ugly.

  Finding the Human skeletons was bad but it was almost worse when we found the Velox Engineer. He looked perfectly fine except all there was left was his exoskeleton. He was hollow inside.

  Starport Central was growing in the viewer. The round hub spinning above Arth was our destination. It was possible we would take the time to go planetside. The ship upgrades could take some time. We’d found five Class Four missile launchers, Class Five engines and a cargo pod that we could install on the Calibur. It was quite a haul.

  “Starport, this is the Calibur. We have salvage in tow and will need a double docking,” Trivett said at the com station.

  “We see you Calibur. Is that a complete ship?”

  “Mostly,” she answered. “It is what’s left of the Firmament.”

  The coms were silent for a moment. “Dock in bay six. We’ll have the engineers move the Firmament to bay seven. Were there any survivors? She’s been out for almost two years.”

  “Negative, Control. All the crew were deceased when we found her. There was a predatory infestation. All records will be sent before docking. Perhaps a team will want to go through her before docking on the station.”

  “Affirmative. In that case, enter orbit and we will send a tug to tether the Firmament without docking until recordings are viewed.”

  “Entering orbit in twenty minutes,” she said.

  “Acknowledged, Calibur.”

  “Welcome home, team,” I said as I eased out of the captain’s chair. “I guess we’re all ready for some time off the ship.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Zelos said, looking askance at Teila.

  “Really?” she shook her head.