They had been adrift for three hours. If anyone was going to detect them, they would have by now. Jackson was running the simulation of speed they were traveling when the explosion took place to the distance they had covered compared to the speed the stark whites were going. He wasn’t the brightest spacer, but every spacer had to be able to solve the colliding train problem or approximate it sometimes. He came to the conclusion that they would have reached the point of debris by now and be closing on the Adrift Sphere with intent.

If they had been detected by any means beyond looking like a hunk of metal in space, that is.

Despite only having his helmet sensors and zoom, Jackson hadn’t seen anything resembling a drive bloom. He could see stars in the distance moving, but they were not moving towards them. Likely, their pursuers were in a search pattern to see if they could locate the main wreck instead of just the debris.

Orashen hoped that they would eventually convince themselves that the spare parts were all that was left. Those pieces had flown through the cloud of plasma and fiery explosions, likely looking charred or partially melted, adding to the ability to convince the hostile ships of their destruction.

They simply wouldn’t know yet, as Jackson only reported by doing morse code bangs on the hull. Radio was banned unless there was a new emergency. He would bang out his message once an hour and receive bangs in return. The only way for him to hear the return bangs would be to put his helmet glass against the hull and hold his breath to not lose the faint sounds that could be transferred back to him.

The ship was dark and eerie. The crew jumped at any movement and the sound of ice cracking as the ship was still spinning, not settling enough for the ice to stay in the same spot forever. They felt footprints in ice and snow across the deck as the moisture in the air condensed and froze.

The quiet in the ship was awful. To any spacer, absolute silence was the worst thing one could hear, the same as if you were driving down a road and suddenly the car engine stopped, and any attempt to restart it resulted in nothing when you turned the key or pressed the brakes. No feedback or reaction of any kind from the vehicle. Their home was helpless, filling them with fear and a sense of dread.

The foreboding of the situation was edging everyone’s nerves the longer they kept going forward. Hoary had handed out a few books from her room. The crew tapped out morse code to keep the door closed and radios off. Hoary only loaned out books that she was comfortable allowing them to read. Not because the books were dangerous, but because they were originals from a time when humans walked the system. She didn’t want them damaged and informed everyone to be extremely careful with them.

Hoary was busying herself with monitoring Alison, using old fashion paper and pencil to analyze her patient’s situation, and to figure out how best to treat Alison once they had power back up. Everything from drawing up the various transplant parts to put into Alison, to what to do about the scarring, and how to deal with the possibility of another vein or artery suddenly deciding to bleed.

The cold was helping her patient,closing the metabolic process and by extension slowing any bleeding or chance for infection. Hoary recognized this as her pencil snapped, not the tip but the whole pencil, clean in half. It was nearly negative twenty degrees celsius inside her medbay. She was freezing and wrapped in blankets, along with anything else she could find. She was going to wait as long as possible to heat the room back up.

If anything, she had made it intentionally colder everywhere around Alison’s wounds while placing a heated blanket, the only one she had, over Alison, and the heater itself was in the bed instead of the room. So Alison’s body was at a nice 10 C, while the room and her arm was nearly at the point of frostbite. Hoary, on the other hand, could see the icicles along her feathers, forming on her horned eyebrows.

Lexington was reading, as was Riptide, trying to busy themselves with a pair of good books. Riptide was reading “Where The Red Fern Grows” by Wilson Rawls, while Lexington was invested in a biology book about avialae and their now distant avian cousins.

Riptide looked up. “Why are you reading that exactly?”

Lexington looked up nervously and tried to smile it off. “Ya know… sometimes you wanna impress a girl and umm… ask her on a date?”

Riptide burst into laughter. “Hoary? And you?”

Lexington slammed the book down and then looked at it nervously as if Hoary could hear or see him mistreat the book before he regained his composure. “No… hell no! I had another avialae in mind, that’s all, and I kinda wanna know about them before, ya know…”

The lemon shark couldn’t help but laugh more, then nodded at him and returned to reading about Little Anne and Big Dan, rooting for the dogs to tree their first raccoon.

Orashen was checking on her artifacts and trying to see if she could come up with something new she hadn’t seen before in these old trophies taken from human sites across the system, ranging from probes sent out long ago, to rovers and their landing sites, to former human bases, and even a couple of colonies.

Yet in the bitter cold, she really couldn’t see anything new, only old notes and old things she had seen dozens of times. It was something to pass the time, an act that archeologists would have done for generation after generation before her. Studying the same artifact over and over again, even if nothing new presented itself. She was at least at peace doing it. She still had to pass the time like everyone else.

Hoary would warm her talons under the heated blanket and then check Alison’s vital signs every ten minutes, trying to make sure there were not any major changes, but otherwise the fifth hour had no changes. The crew continued to busy themselves.

By hour seven, Riptide and Lexington were sleeping, and Orashen was listening out for Jackson’s tapping. Hoary was struggling to stay awake and had resorted to licking at a frozen energy drink to get the caffeine from it. Further, she had turned on the heater now, as she was at her personal limit. They were still three hours from the rings, three hours from potential safety. That is, if their calculations had been correct.

By hour nine, only Hoary and Jackson were awake. Jackson made his way inside the airlock and prepared to use the thrusters to slow them down. It was cold, isolating work for both of them. The rest of the crew were conserving oxygen and energy. The stale air would kill them, as well as the lack of it from two separate breaching events.

The room Hoary was in was stuffy, having been heated to a manageable 11C. Still chilly, but she was fine with just her feathers now, and the heated blanket could be cut off, but she was isolated in a small room without ventilation, and there were two of them in that room, slowly running out of air. If she opened the doors to get better air, not necessarily fresh air, inside, it would thin out, and that could kill Alison, but so would the air that was slowly becoming toxic and making it hard to think.

“Twenty more minutes,” Hoary said to herself, trying more to convince herself it was nearly over more than anything else. She also mentally cursed herself for taking up air to say those three words. Her head was fuzzy, she was getting a headache. She checked Alison’s pulse.

It was still low, lower than it should have been from just sedation. Hoary had noticed it getting lower and lower as time passed. Alison’s breathing was getting worse, despite the oxygen tank having been removed from the wall and set on manual. She was dying, Hoary knew it. Her only guess was a clamp had gotten loose and now bleeding had resumed inside her arm, a slow bleed. Without power, she couldn’t print more blood, and she couldn’t risk giving any more until she drained out the internal bleeding. She could see where it was with her perfect night vision, as the bruising was a telltale sign.

Hoary made the call as she pulled out tape and started to tape the oxygen mask around Alison’s mouth to seal in as much pressure as possible. She was a bit delirious and stopped to think for just a moment if this was the right decision. She reasoned it was better to try something than do nothing.

She opened the airlock and the medbay door, letting the air thin out but giving them much-needed oxygen, then closed it again, pulling her surgical tools beside her. She was going to operate on her night vision only.

She positioned her tools nearby and decided to risk the radio silence. “Orashen, I’m going to have to operate now. I understand if we cannot restore power, but I need to be warned before we do, I do not want to be blind when I am cutting into Alison.”

That caught Jackson’s attention, the only person awake. He took a risk to turn on the back up generator so he could see the outer cameras. A few moments later, he could see outside the hull and began to use the thrusters to send out small shots of nitrogen gas to maneuver the ship gently. He saw no drive blooms. The ship detected no radar pings hitting their vessel, nor ladar beams either, at least according to the sensors from what Jackson could read. He wasn’t 100% on it because the sensor suite was made by and for Hoary. They were not his specialization.

He clicked his suit radio. “They’re asleep Hoary, I’m the only one awake to conserve oxygen. We’re roughly forty-one minutes from reaching the rings of Saturn. Can it not wait until then?”

Hoary looked up from her tools and did the math in her head about the rate of degradation in Alison compared to how long until they reached the rings, and added time for powering up and switching back over to normal systems. “No, at Alison’s rate of deterioration by then she will be too far gone to do surgery on. She will just die, and all we can do is watch. I need to act now if there is to be a chance of saving her.”

Jackson gulped and hesitantly tried to find some answer. “I mean, can’t you get some lights from the cargo and tu—”

Hoary cut him off. “We jettisoned our flashlights and flood lamp equipment when we opened the cargo bay. There are no lights I can use, and further, we need to run as few electronics as possible, any EM field could prove to be our death if they are still searching for us. Considering how they were painted, I believe they are. Back to radio silence, I’m shutting mine off altogether, knock on the door if we are turning the power back on.”

Hoary cut off her radio and started her work. In total darkness, her night vision did pick up some light coming from tiny places, and that was enough to see clearly to her. While everything was in black and white, she would have to determine what part of Alison she was working on from where she was in her body and what shape the anatomy was rather than color.

Hoary began to repeat various parts of anatomical knowledge as she set up the area for Alison’s surgery. “Alison’s veins are three nanometers wider than her arteries. Her bones are more flexible than Jackson or mine, but not as flexible as Riptide’s. Felinae can survive a surprising amount of blood loss, her pulse can dip to as low as twenty-five before I need to be extremely worried, however, her pulse needs to hit seventy before I can say she is out of the woods. Perhaps one day I shall see the woods for real with her…”

Hoary pressed the knife and began the surgery, looking for the bleeder that had reopened.
*****
Orashen woke from her dreams, panting from exertion. If she had been a human, she would be drenched in sweat and chilled to the bone. Her body shuddered as she tried to get the taste her subconscious had left in her mind out, rinsing with water and then pouring strong cold tea down her throat. The ship was still cold as ice, she did not need a helmet and her body was fine, but her mind… her mind was giving her sensations that she could not deal with on her own.

She went down to the bridge, observing that Lexington was still in his room. Riptide, however, was clearly uncomfortable. He was sleeping on the floor. She figured his bed, a tube that simulated that sensation and gave his Selachii instincts a magnetic direction to swim towards, had drained and frozen what hadn’t drained by now.

She wasn’t sure if a blanket would help through the armored space suit he was wearing, but the gesture may help. She snuck into Jackson’s room and took one of his three blankets, draping it across him as softly as possible, then snuck back upstairs to the bridge. She saw the faint light and gently knocked against the door to get Jackson’s attention.

“How close are we?”

Jackson’s expression was exhausted, his eyes had bags under them but he still held his optimistic smile. The faint light was from the screens turned on by backup power only, a blip of EM radiation in the dark. She could see the outside cameras. While they had no sensors, they could at least use their eyes, and the faint light was like standing in a movie theater.

“Thirty-four minutes until the edge of the rings, thirty-eight minutes until we reach a point I’m willing to risk turning on the power. Hoary has started surgery on Alison.”

Orashen stopped herself, the words feeling like a blow to her face. “What? In these conditions?”

Jackson nodded. “Yes, in near total darkness in frigid conditions that’s somewhat countered by the heater she has, but I’m willing to bet it’s still too cold to do much of anything in there, much less surgery. I’m also willing to say, she probably hasn’t slept like you three. Neither have I.”

Orashen nodded and swallowed her fears, deciding to put on a brave face. “Jackson, go get some rest, I’ll take over piloting from here and make the call when to turn the ship back on. Sorry you have to sleep in the armor.” She took her post at the captain’s console, standing up and manually locking her harness in place so she could remain standing in place, even if the ship suddenly whipped around from an impact or hard G maneuver.

Jackson started to argue, but Orashen used her captain privilege to transfer his controls to her console and shook her head. “Go rest. At least a power nap.”

Jackson groaned and started to leave. “Alright, but I’m gonna be mad if you don’t wake me up when it’s time.” Jackson slowly walked out of the room and left the bridge door ajar as he went to his room. He stopped, and his heart sank seeing the still closed medbay and Hoary’s helmet missing off her armor. He walked over to the medbay door and sat down next to it, slumping against the door with a discontented sigh.

Sleep came to him within moments, as all he had to do was slump against the wall and let the adrenaline go. Jackson started snoring inside his helmet, which rumbled in the surrounding hallway because he left his microphone on–not that anyone could hear him right now.

Orashen felt a sort of helplessness, but someone had to be awake right now, and Jackson had been awake since yesterday morning. They were adrift, she couldn’t make large adjustments and noticed the constant propelling of gas out of a thrust to maintain a small amount of gravity, probably for Hoary’s surgery, and if she were going to make any course corrections…

One single thrust the wrong way, Hoary cuts the wrong thing and Alison dies. Great, so if we are detected, Hoary has to find a way to pause mid-surgery. I’m just here to inform us if we are going to die more than anything else, or at least if we have to write Alison’s life off to save everyone else.

Orashen hated these decisions as Captain. Privileges were nice, the personal room that was larger than everyone else’s, knowledge of the ship and your name at the top of the ship profile were nice. But this problem, this was not a decision she wanted to make.
*****
Hoary had found the first bleeder, clamping it down. It was one she missed, but the blood pressure wasn’t stable yet, and Alison’s heart rate was slowly lowering down. Hoary was drastically inhibited right now. Her pushframe moved objects, acting as one hand, while one talon rested on Alison’s chest, directly checking the pulse from the source. She would very much apologize for the indiscretion. However, this was life saving aid, and Alison was unconscious. Further, her body was sitting down on a surgical table, so her other talon could be used for making surgical cuts and applying clamps to stop bleeding.

She kept going, working meticulously and trying to not rush or panic. Any surgeon who moved fast may be flashy, but they would miss something important. She kept her thoughts suppressed. The second guessing, the double checking, all of it compounding on the surgery’s duration because it was using her night vision to work instead of bright surgical lighting she was used to.

She kept working, her owl horns risen fully as she paid absolute attention to every single detail. Adrenaline had to be suppressed to keep her talon from shaking, or her pushframe from losing steadiness or focus.

You are not a meatball surgeon, you will save her instead of just prolonging the inevitable.

Twenty minutes of grueling surgery later, Hoary closed the new incision she made. She had drained the blood internally and clamped everything she could inside the arm, shoulder, and chest cavity. She was not confident in her work, but Alison’s pulse had stopped lowering. Right now Hoary estimated it between 26 and 29 beats per minute, just barely above the absolute dangerzone. Hoary exhaled and slumped against the wall. She should sleep.

She had been awake for nearly twenty hours straight. Vectors were made in human image, and strangely this included a six to eight hour sleep cycle. Hoary shook her head, trying to wear off some of the fatigue and stood up, slowly pacing around the lab. No, cannot sleep. Must check Alison’s breathing and pulse every five minutes in case I messed up or missed something.

Hoary decided to risk another radio break as she queued her helmet. “Surgery complete. Alison is re-stabilized. I cannot promise for how long, or if she will survive an amputation at this point, much less long enough to restore her arm to function with grafts. I am sorry to say, we must risk the ship if we want the best chances for her.”

Orashen was the one to reply to her at this point. “I cannot do that, we have a little longer before we reach the rings, and even longer until we are able to hide among the space dust and asteroids. Please do what you can and return to radio silence.”

Hoary exhaled and shuddered. She continued her pattern for another twenty minutes, Alison working down from 26-29, to 24-27, to 22-24, to 20-21, beats per minute. Her heart was giving out and Hoary knew it, it just hadn’t outright died yet. There may be brain damage.

Orashen believed they were deep enough now. “All crew, wake up. Riptide, get the core online again, we need power.”

Hoary perked up. Radio silence was broken as the crew groggily got up from their short naps or half sleep cycles. The ship rumbled and the vibrations of the engines returned at the lowest power, providing proper gravity with just enough thrust to give them a half a G.

Hoary let the adrenaline take her as the crew did their jobs. From outside the medbay, it appeared peaceful, but inside, Hoary had cut off her radio completely and locked the door. She was scrambling, getting the printer going to print the various tissue grafts. This was meatball surgery in the 7th century A.E. She was running between the graft printer to Alison, cleaning the wound and then applying the graft. As soon as she would finish one graft of flesh, bone, sinew, or skin, another one would be ready.

Alison was going to be scarred, badly, there was no fixing it without extensive cosmetic surgery. Hoary had given up on that not being a possibility, regardless of her skill. Finally, she was ready to apply the last layers and gently cut into the transplanted flesh made from Alison’s DNA, checking every layer for any imperfections or misprints or her own application.

The crew, on the other hand, was checking every sensor they had. They kept checking all their readings for even the slightest hint of pursuit. They found two ion trails that were not their own ship’s at the end of their range, but they could only fully confirm their own trail because they knew what to look for. Any scan that wasn’t manually highlighting their trail of left behind elements and shedding they wouldn’t be able to see, but yes, someone had kept pursuing them just over two-thousand kilometers away or more.

A range on a planet that would be considered intercontinental in range, but to space, it was the edge of sensors, and within seventeen hundred kilometers was weapons range for missiles. Closer still at five-hundred kilometers, railguns were nearly undodgeable, and within four hundred kilometers, the death zone, one could not hope to dodge or intercept enough missiles or the railgun shots before they impacted. This was considered close-quarters battle range, and they could see, tracking the trail back with the scientific suite, that something had been that close to them, within CQB range, and simply never detected them.

Based on the trails of ions decay and the sensor readings they could get out to that range, as well as visible evidence that one would have to know to look for, something had been within CQB for at least twelve minutes of their ten hour drift and not found them. The ion trail matched one of the heavy fighters from the hostile craft.

By the luck of the universe, they had managed to avoid detection. Hoary began surgery moments before they moved to within that range. Everyone’s guess was that they picked up a brief moment of EM radiation from the radio broadcast and went to investigate, found nothing, and returned to their fleet to leave.

The ship would take an hour to fully warm up. Hoary kept working through the pain of the cold and the gradual warm up. Life support was restored, assisting her, and the oxygen tank could be turned back on automatically. Computer assistance was making her move faster.

She saw how she was shaking, her fatigue was catching up to her. Three hours passed and she was still working on Alison, trying her best to save every part of her friend.

Jackson cooked food for everyone, and tried to figure out something to substitute live food that Hoary preferred as a morale boost. He was making comfort food for everyone based on their species and preferences. If anything, to help keep their mood up, or prepare to offset them if Hoary failed.

Riptide was getting a long form blubber steak with minced garlic and mint over it, and a hint of sweet peppers. He topped it with banana peppers and a side of jerky that was turned into quite a juicy yet still snappy meat stick, made of swordfish substitute and wrapped in crab bacon.

Orashen was getting a combination of winter berries minced into a griffon berry pie. She added a side of mashed potatoes that got several little pieces of chicken integrated throughout the mashed carbs. He cut a few pieces of freeze dried pheasant meat and revived it as best he could, remaking salty and dehydrated meat into juicy and added sweetness with a couple of tangerines for juice and sugar.

Lexington was having a full hunk of pork prepared for him, adding a smokehouse flavor by smoking it over the other dishes, then sprinkling in worcestershire sauce, red pepper, garlic, salt, and sage. He added a topping of mushroom gravy he had prepared for Orashen as well, finding it useful to give them some of each other’s flavor. He also prepared asparagus for Lexington to clear his pallet between bites and a side of heavy baked beans to help put Lexington into a food coma.

For himself, he was cooking muffins; apple mince and blackberry. The apple for sweetness and the blackberry for tart. He was doing all this while he tried to figure out what to give Hoary, if anything. She had a tendency to not eat when she was presented with failure.

Riptide was busy working on repairs and checking any faults, errors, or problems from the ship's shutdown and restart, as well as any signals that might have resulted in damage from the explosion. He kept checking each individual part of the ship more than once in many cases. Anything to keep his worried mind away from what was going on inside the medbay.

Jackson called everyone down to the kitchen for food, and they ate in silence, short two members. No one wanted to speak; it was like a social taboo to break at that moment.

One that Orashen decided she would break. “Hey, remember that time Alison got stuck in the vent because we turned on the heat, and the vent walls expanded and she didn’t account for that tight hole?”

Lexington snickered and nodded. “Yeah, it was right in the worst place too. She let out the worst fart and the air blew it into my room. I thought someone broke the toilet.”

Riptide let out a laugh. “You had me checking the waste disposal system for an hour before we realized it was just Alison stuck in the vent airlock between ship sections.”

Jackson smiled genuinely now, instead of his usual hopeful front he kept up by trying to look at the best outcome. He was genuinely happy to see them making jokes. They finished eating and the day passed on. They all needed sleep, and agreed to try their best to do the usual shift of who would be monitoring the ship, with Jackson and Riptide taking each half of Hoary’s shift since they still only heard silence from the medbay.

Most did not get real sleep. Lexington worked himself in a frenzy to try to unlock the secrets of the hard drives they had recovered from the ship. Riptide finally gave in and slept when he got the water flow through his sleeping area back online, finally able to step inside and let the current take him with his instincts. Jackson sat on his bed, watching anime and playing a video game at the same time. The game was a colony simulator, and he was playing a medieval challenge. The anime was generic harem slop, but it was wholesome slop.

He fell asleep with his game still running, and at some point in his sleep his colony started burning from raiders and fire right before the autosave made it impossible to recover from all his work getting burned away.

Orashen tried playing an ancient video game, Tetris. She wished she knew the game’s origin, but at this point it was a nice distraction during her shift that turned from two hours to eight hours, meaning she kept watch all night almost, until Lexington came in, surprised she was still there.

“Orashen? Your shift was first? Where is Riptide?”

Orashen turned her head. “Asleep. Along with Jackson. They didn’t wake up for their shifts, and I wasn’t about to wake them up. So I took theirs and Hoary’s. I’ve been playing Tetris all night. I beat your high score.”

Lexington gritted his teeth. He took great pride in being the best video gamer on the ship, and now someone had beaten him. He figured it was because she had been playing for eight hours, but when he got to his own seat on the bridge, he found out she beat him in the first hour and was gradually getting worse as the night went on.

“I see… well ya know, I’ll get it back.”

Orashen yawned heavily and nodded. “Always do.”

The bridge door opened and the sound of talons echoed on the floor. They both snapped their heads around. Hoary started to speak, but instead the big owl girl just fell face first onto the floor. Her body gave out to exhaustion when she finally reached them after more than forty hours awake.

Orashen ran to her and checked on her. “Jackson! Come get Hoary and take her to her bed!” Orashen put Hoary down and bolted down the hallway, leaving Hoary on the floor, who was stained with blood and still wearing her surgical gloves, mask, and scrubs. She was terrified of what she was going to find.

She got to the medbay and opened the door, her eyes taking longer than normal to adjust to the brightness inside. Orashen’s body was having issues being up all night and on high alert as much as everyone else. There was a pause inside as her heart skipped a beat while her eyes focused within the light.

A medical monitor beep caught her ear, and she turned her head towards it. Alison’s bed had been moved back into the medbay. Her pulse read 49. Her blood pressure was stable. Every part of her from the left side of her face, down her shoulder and around her arm, all the way to the wrist was covered completely in bandages. Further outside of that was a thin plastic see-through isolation covering that acted as an air sealant against infection until the newly grafted flesh underneath integrated with Alison’s immune system.

Alison was alive. Hoary was willing to leave the room, which meant she was stable. Alison might get to live.

Jackson had taken Hoary down to her bed and removed the surgical garb gently and carefully. He was holding the bird woman as if she were his baby while being as delicate as possible. He laid her in the bed upright against the L-shaped mattress wall and draped a blanket over her. She let out little cute hooting snores that he would keep to himself and pretend like she didn’t make, both because he knew she would be upset at him, and because he found that keeping a secret like that was worth it.
*****
Lexington immediately noticed a few things about parsing the information. There were several messages to a Mr. Henderson and a Mr. Tabbington. He didn’t recognize the first name, but a cursory search of the extra-net showed that this Mr. Tabbington appeared to be the same Mr. Tabbington as the richest vector on Mercury, more precisely Mercury Station, the hottest livable point in the System.

Mercury was sparsely inhabited, and only temporarily so, by either mobile facilities or by underground facilities, but either way, you only stayed on the planet to do research and leave. Having permanent establishments on a surface that could reach 430 degrees on a daily basis was not something you could stand to do and still withstand the freezing nearly minus 100 temperatures of the night. Oftentimes, mobile facilities did exist, great buildings that moved on caterpillars at just over the planet’s rotational speed to stay within the golden dawn or dusk zones of the planet’s rotation.

He kept checking messages until he found one with a letterhead, it was indeed the same Mr Tabbington. They had mistakenly sent it from the wrong email address, and he matched it to the official letterhead, including the underlying code that protected it from being copied or forged. It was real, it was all real. Mr. Tabbington was the person who had been in regular communication or mentioned in communications within the white ship.

For once, they were not reacting, but had clues to who had tried to board them and now kill them. He rushed to find Orashen, only to see her lying against the wall next to Alison’s bed, asleep with her head resting on the edge of the bed and her back against the wall under the vitals monitor. Lexington stopped himself. It wasn’t like this information was going to change much right now, and he could work a little longer.

Instead, he returned to his post on the bridge. He continued to monitor sensors on one screen while picking through the box on an isolated portable computer. He kept diving deeper, putting together a conspiracy board as he went, trying to figure out who was involved and what they were involved in as he worked it all out.

He wouldn’t just have a name when Orashen woke up, but would have more comprehensive information. He was getting names, dates, times, mission parameters, other things that had been targeted. Then he found something of the holy grail to himself, a file labeled: “Star of Io.”

It had been recently updated, but had files dating back to just a few days before he boarded that doomed vessel over two years ago. Now he had something, and he guessed the lack of security inside the drives was simply because they thought themselves untouchable. Basic passwords protected them, but a simple key checking search into the recent searches on the drives gave him most of those, and with that he could figure out which user names went where as well as whose password belonged to whom. Many used passwords that related to them, and that gave him more information about who was on board the ship, in some cases whole names of friends, family, or pets could be derived by the passcodes, at least in his mind.

Lexington was a conspiracy theorist, but strangely such skills did in fact cross into how police detective work was done. Now he had proof there was a conspiracy, but what it was for was far beyond him. He just had to keep digging.

For once, instead of Orashen, Lexington was the one digging deep.