Corey stared straight down the barrel of the circular ship. It had two spokes connecting the interior pod to an exterior wheel, like a smaller version of the “Great Wheel” ships that had been the vanguard of the Horuk’s attempted invasion. Dozens of ships like this had chased the Hard Luck Hermit with lethal intent during the Morrakesh crisis. Right now, there was only one, slowly rotating in the void ahead of them.
“We should’ve shot the damn thing out of the black as soon as it showed up,” Kamak said.
“It’s still out of range,” Bevo said. “I pull the trigger now, it has all the time it needs to react.”
“Well what about that fake engine trouble thing you were going to do? Lure it in!”
“I got a little distracted when the invading army of horrible arm monsters showed up,” Tooley said. “If I tried it now it’d obviously be fake.”
“Well fucking do it anyway,” Kamak said. “Or just start running. I don’t want to be here when this thing’s friends show up.”
“Well...it doesn’t have any friends,” Tooley said. “Dead space for lightyears around.”
She tapped her monitors, and the blank readouts on every front. There was nothing but void in every direction, with no signs of any approaching vessels.
“Maybe it’s a straggler from the Battle of the Bang Gate,” To Vo suggested. “There could’ve been at least one ship outside the blast zone.”
“And what, it’s been biding its time for two years to catch us alone? That’s- no, yeah, that’s probably what happened,” Kamak said. It would fit the tone of their life perfectly. “All the more reason to shoot it now.”
“Wait,” Farsus said. “If it’s alone and isolated, this could be an opportunity for us to capture it intact.”
“Now is not the time to satisfy your curiosity, Farsus.”
“It’s about more than that,” Farsus said. “The universe at large has no idea the breadth of the Horuk empire, their military forces, where in the universe their holdings are located. An intact ship’s computer might have a treasure trove of useful military secrets.”
“Even basic navigational data could paint a picture of their whole empire,” Tooley said. Her ship’s logs contained basic maps of all major transit routes through the known universe, and by extension, info on all its major population centers. If the Horuk ship had a similar archive system, they could download a fairly comprehensive map of Horuk-controlled space.
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“The weapons range thing goes both ways,” Bevo said. “As long as we stay this far apart, it can’t really hurt us anymore than we can hurt it. Standoff’s fine.”
“Farsus is right,” Ghost chimed in, still speaking out of Kamak’s datapad. “That thing is a treasure trove we need to crack open. Keep it in stalemate as long as possible. If that stalemate breaks, follow your old escape trajectory, it’ll lead you right to our escort ships.”
“And if it tries to kill us?”
“Then try to aim at unimportant things,” Ghost said.
Kamak was about to ask for a definition of “unimportant”, but then the beeping started.
“Burn me, that’s not another proximity alarm, is it?”
“No, that was the screeching noise you heard like a drop ago, Ghosty,” Kamak said. “What is that alarm?”
Tooley looked down at her console. She’d actually never heard that chime before.
“Unrecognized contact attempt,” Tooley said, quoting the popup exactly.
“Cont-” Kamak stopped and looked up at the spinning wheel ship. “That thing’s trying to talk to us?”
He put a hand on his hip, where a gun usually would be. He glared at Bevo, who had the actual guns and was still not using them.
“Well,” Doprel said. “Do we want to listen?”
“Any chance this gives us some kind of virus that hijacks our ship remotely?”
“None,” Tooley said.
“Well then,” Kamak said. “Shoot them anyway.”
“Stop,” Ghost demanded. “At least open the comms channel.”
Tooley figured the spooky government secret agent ranked higher than the local asshole, so she flipped some switches and connected to the unknown channel. The sound system started to play a low, repetitive message.
“Surrender. Surrender. Surrender.”
After listening to the word repeat a few times, Tooley turned the volume down and let the message loop in the background.
“Surrender,” Doprel said. “Why would it want to surrender?”
“If it really is a leftover from the battle, it’s been stranded for years,” To Vo said. “It’s been alone, probably running out of supplies...maybe it just wants help?”
“That’s sweet of you, To Vo, but also stupid,” Kamak said. “The battle happened way on the other end of the universe. It could’ve flown back to its home galaxy faster than it could’ve flown here. Even if what you said is true, why it would wait this long, and why would it try to surrender to us specifically?”
Kamak pointed a finger at circular ship.
“This is a fucking trap, and we are currently falling for it,” Kamak said. “Shoot the damn thing and let’s get out of here, damn what Ghosty says.”
“You could’ve at least hung up on me before you said that,” Ghost sighed.
“Fuck you,” Kamak said. “Are you all insane? Do you guys not remember when we were in Morrakesh’s hangar? One of those fucking things ripped an innocent person to shreds! Ate them, piece by piece.”
Kamak’s stomach turned as he recalled the gruesome sight. The Horuk’s victim had been chosen specifically to resemble Kamak, so the memory had stuck in his mind over the years despite his best efforts to forget. He still had nightmares about it sometimes.
“They tried to burn down the universe,” Kamak said. “They killed Ghul! We’re not talking to them, we’re shooting them! We have enough to fucking deal with without-”
“We need to talk to them,” Corey snapped. He’d been staring at the ship long enough that something had finally snapped into place.
The circular ship had two spokes connecting the interior pod to an exterior wheel. The spokes were at odd angles, and turned slowly as the ship rotated -like the hands of a clock.
“‘When the hands of the clock catch up to you, try talking it out’,” Corey said. Kamak recalled the words of the AI, and then looked back at the spinning ship.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
