Twenty-Eight

On the enemy wreck, Campar, Ghati, and Vaudai labor to cut into a heavily shielded control room as enemy ships approach. Inside, they find dark consoles, corpses of humans, and a five-limbed alien species. Campar collects samples, including from a blackened variant whose tissue resists cutting, while Vaudai copies command protocols and communications, concluding the ship cannot be detonated remotely and would require direct attack.

As ship power returns and battle overspill ignites the corridors, Vaudai herds them into hardened shelters. A sample from the blackened tissue animates inside its vial. Vaudai identifies a reactivating “deathless” enemy aboard, likely damaged but dangerous. With energy spikes waxing and waning, Vaudai proposes splitting to maximize escape odds.

Rejecting abandonment, Campar devises a decoy loop through unhardened corridors to draw the deathless into the next field surge. He sprints through flickering halls, pursued by the three-limbed foe, and times his route with the returning aurora. At the service corridor’s end, the enemy collides with him; as overspill swells, both begin to cook.

Ghati and Vaudai pull Campar into shelter and seal the hatch as the deathless flares to incandescence. Campar hurls his sample kit—evidence meant for the Carryx—into the killing light, destroying it. Badly burned and disoriented, Campar is treated aboard the expedition ship. Ghati explains the Carryx have won the engagement, and orders are coming to send them home.