FACE THY ENEMY (Revised 11/5/23)

The damaged ship touched down on the western edge of the kilometers long debris field. The starboard rear landing strut had partially buckled during Lockdpur's earlier rescue, leaving one ot the ship's engines sitting dangerously close to the ground. The crippled ship now faced the area of the earlier raptor attack. After take off, Dahl had only flown the craft a kilometer away before forced to land again. On take off, sand had filled the starboard air intakes, extinguishing the engin in mid flight. The grit needed to be cleared away before the ship could fly safely

The crew hoped nothing would follow them, but knew that eventuality was highly unlikely. So, before powering the engines down, Dahl engaged the forward infrared motion sensors, ensuring no raptors could sneak up on them while they licked their wounds and repaired the damaged ship. For good measure, she focused the forward short range radar array at the substrate between the ship and the forward compartment. She wanted to know if the raptors were using the caverns beneat them to come up from below.

Moss didn't say a word about Dahl taking charge. He didnt even notice. He was nursing a shattered forearm, a chunk of missing earlobe and riding a dreamy wave of morphine induced euphoria. Moss was stoned, he wouldn't have cared if a raptor ran up to the tailgate, knocked on the airlock hatch and asked for a ride off world. Shit yeah, my raptor compadre. Come on in. Let's go.

For the first time since they arrived, Moss felt like everythings was smooth sailing. Sure, he saw 7 fingers on his left hand and no matter how hard he shook it, the extra 2 fingers just wouldn't come off. But hey man, that was OK, because at least the hallucinations didn't have teeth. He was done with teeth.

"How much of that shit did the auto-doc dose him with?" Lockspur asked, watching Moss laughing and shaking his hand in front of his own face.

Dahl watched Moss with a smirk. "Enough." she answered. 

"Think I can get a dose or two?" Lockspur asked. "I might have a few broken ribs." He knew he hadn't broken any ribs, his pain was from a nasty case of pancreatic cancer, both inoperable and terminal. It twisted his guts into agonizing knots.

Dahl looked him over, saw no visible signs of serious injury and asked, "I Doubt it. The auto-doc doesn't miss much you have any bones sticking out? Because Moss did. He had two."

Lockspur looked unimpressed. "Chica, someone always gets hurt."

"Is it customary to refer to your mission Commander as girl?

"Term of endearment." he replied, waving her off.

"Sure. But if you want meds, you'll have to take it up with the auto-doc. But dont hold your breath."

Lockspur knew the auto-doc wouldn't perscribe him any pain killers. Lilith Hemmingford had programmed it to not register his pancreatic cancer. It was the only way Lilith could clear him for the mission.

"No matter," he said. "Lilith gave me a 50 year old bottle of scotch before we left. I was keeping it for the return trip. But the the way this shitshow is panning out, I doubt there will be a return trip.""

"Does that mean you're going to share?" 

He smiled, pushed a pair of shotglasses into the middle of the console and produced a bottle. "A few rounds should take the edge off."

"That and a year on a beach at Fhloston Paradise."

Dahl had no idea how close she come to the reason why he had come. Lockspur was a 72 year old man with a failing liver implant, pancreatic cancer and severe rheumatoid arthritis. He didn't need this mission, he needed hospice care. But when Lilith offered him a chance of ending his days in paradise, he took it.

Moss swiveled around, held up a small card and blared, "Benjam Moss, multi-pass. Mull tea pass."

"No shit, Sherlock. She knows it's a multi-pass." Lockspur said. "Christ. He spends one weekend in paradise with two Arcturians twins and still has the multi-pass to prove it."

"Weren't they guys?"

"Men. Women. They were Arcturians, is there a difference?"

Outside the ship, the majority of the Hunter Gratzner's lower hull trailed away over the horizons in both directions.

When the Hunter Gratzner's came down, its front compartment slid 3 kilometers further than the aft two sections, and 5 kilometers past its intial impact site of impact. The gargantuan ship carved a 30 yard deep trench as it ground to a stop, leaving the majority of its lower deck strewn across the trench floor.

The now severely listing mercenary ship sat on the edge of that trench, midpoint between the disconnected nose section they just fled from and the two tail section sticking up on the horizon.

The Hunter Gratzner's mid and aft sections rose out of the massive trench, touching the sky like a skyscraper. In comparison to the enormous tail sections, the seemimgly giant front compartment looked more like a subcompact car parked beside two boxcars. The compartments had a combined weight of over 40 million metric tons. 

Moss sat in the pilot's seat, gazing out through the dirty windscreen at the sheer amount of debris trailing off both left and right. Dahl had strapped him in earlier to make sure he didn't fall out and hurt himself. "It's a wonder there's anything left, at all." he said, looking first in one direction and then in the other. Moss peered over his shoulder at Lockspur and Dahl, gestured through the windscreen excitedly and said, "Come look. There's raptors out there dancing in a conga line."

Dahl shook her head and said , "Maybe the auto-doc gave him a few too many painkillers."

"Good," Lockspur replied with a grin. "It's the first time I've seen him smile in years."

"Not nice."

"No," he admitted. "But it is true." 

Shortly after the team touched down, the auto-doc reset and splinted Moss's broken arm. Then it stitched the weeping lacerations on Lockspur's peeling scalp and sutured Dahl's hamburgered face and shoulder back together. Afterwhich, the exhausted team took a few hours to rest. Without telling them, the auto-doc administered a cocktail of sedatives and anti-anxiety meds. Afterwhich, the frazzled team slept for nearly twenty hours.

Dahl nodded off in the co-pilot's seat, bare feet resting on top of the control console listening to her favorite tunes on a set of noise canceling headphones that Lilith gave her for her last birthday. Her dreams were pleasant enough. The fog created by the long hyper-sleep had faded. 

Lockspur lay in the cargo hold on a drop-down troop seat. In his lap, a datapad cycled through countless photos of his long absent family. He wasn't in any of the photos. He fell asleep clutching the datapad and the bag of sour candies Moss had given Dahl. He had found them on his console where he forgot them.

Somehow, without anyone seeing him get up and leave, Moss stumbled out the infirmary to his favorite seat in the ship. A high back chair in front of a work bench in the armory. 30 minutes later, he slept slumped over a myriad of half cleaned weapons and a tipped over bottle of dripping Break Free weapons cleaner. A rifle lay clamped in a vise in front of him and a dirty cleaning brush still filled his good hand.

After many hours passed, the still weary team, woke and shared a hot meal together. They laughed, and joked and teased, and bitched. After which, they talked about going out again. None of them were in a hurry to feel the light of endless day on their skin again.

Thanks to Moss's repeated insistence that he heard a woman's voice on the other side of the hatch, Dahl had conceded someone might be out there. As for Lockspur, he knew there was someone out there. He still had a meeting. Although, he did not know where or when it would take place.

In the end though, they agreed that whatever was out there must have played some role in the raptor attacks that almost claimed their lives, and perhaps, it had been the driving force behind the attack on the crash survivors, as well. The unsettling thought left them questioning whether they could successfully complete their mission or if they should abandon the mission all together.

Before they decided, Lockspur reminded them, they had only completed one of the three missions parameters. They still needed to verify if anyone had survived the wreck and what brought the ship down. Once those mission parameters were met, they had detailed instructions to send all pertinent intel back to Sol Lucia via a subspace transmission burst.

"We arrived late," Moss said, staring at the Hunter Gratzner on a monitor. "Whatever's out there..." He saw his teammates roll their eyes and added, "And there is... something out there."

"Agree to disagree," Lockspur replied.

"Whatever is out there," Moss continued. " It got here before we did. Now, It has the advantage and we're left playing catch up or… die."

"There's nothing out there, amigo." Lockspur assured him.

"I heard her behind that hatch."

"It was her, compadre. She's real. And she's here, right now."

Lockspur shook his head. "The dark Athena is just a myth, amigo. You know there's no one out there. We never really believed that nonsense. It was just to scare the targets."

"Was it?" Moss said, more to himself than the others. "I'm not so certain anymore."

"It doesn't matter if we believe someone is out there or not" Dahl said. "Moss believes it. So, we have to go on the assumption someone could be out there. Besides, If we go out believing someone is out there and no one is, no big deal. But if we go out there believing no one's out there, and someone is, we could be in serious danger."

"Whatever you say, jefa." Lockspur said. "You're in charge."

As the team readied themselves for the upcoming mission, a nagging sense of Deja vu crept through the ship. None of them spoke of it. They didn't have to. An oppressive feeling of impending doom hung in the air like choking smoke in a burning room.

"Moss," Dahl called over the comms, as the cargo ramp lowered in preparation to go outside. Lockspur stepped up beside her, donned his glasses as the light streamed in. He checked his weapon and was glad Moss hadn't seen how filthy it was . It was clean and loaded with 30 rounds. Actually, 31 rounds. Moss has loaded the clip, jacked a round in the chamber and then topped off the magazine.

"Yeah," Moss answered, absentmindedly messaging his throbbing forearm. "What do you need?" Thanks to the auto-doc, Moss's arm had already begun to knit together. But the still fractured bones in his forearm would be on the mend for another 12 hours or so. Until then, he would just have to be careful. The idea of resetting his broken arm made him wince. Even with a load of morphine in his system there had been a considerable amount of screaming involved with his earlier treatment.

"Can you check the data we recovered."

She heard Moss sigh. "Are you asking or telling?"

Dahl's first instinct was to over react, but then she thought, this is a test, It's not a challenge. "As acting commander, I'm ordering."

"Good. Clarity is a commander's best friend. Keep that in mind and you'll go far." he said. "Now, what are you looking for?"

"First, use the arrays to scan for non-indiginous life forms between here and the aft wreckage. "

"Great idea," Moss replied, still rubbing his arm. "Raptors will blend into the hot environment, everything else should register as cooler. If someone is out there, they stick out like soar thumb."

The numbing morphine in his system had worn off hours ago and Moss's arm had begun aching like an abscessed tooth. It was for that reason, he had decided to remain behind in a support role. He had to keep his head clear and that meant anti-inflammatory meds only. No more happy pills for him. Suck it up buttercup, he thought. Its time to put on your big boy pants. Your team needs you.

Normally a broken arm in the field is no big deal. But the auto-doc had injected Moss with a standard set of bone replacement meds. The drugs were created to accelerate bone growth during the creation of Waylan Yutani's controversial N6 replicants program. After that program failed, the N6s vanished,.or so the company would have us believe. Subsequently, Waylan Yutani Pharmaceuticals deemed the cloning meds safe for human trials. And roll in the big bucks.

Typically, after being dosed with a round of meds, a patient is placed in stasis for 48 to 72 hours. That is the duration of extreme pain a patient experiences during the initial knitting process. Accelerated bone stitching procedures routinely lead to pain levels high enough to result in cardiac convulsions and death. The cure can kill. But Moss didn't have a lot of options. So, the auto-doc induced a chemical coma for the first 24 hours after his procedure and perscribed morphine tabs for the next 24 hours. Moss took the 1st dose of pain meds, but not liking the extra fingers or dancing raptors, refused anymore.

"If you think breaking your arm hurts." the auto-doc warned. "Wait until you experience accelerated bone regrowth with no pain meds." A sudden realization came over Moss. Whoever programmed the auto-docs AI bedside manner had done a lousy job. 

Moss knew his arm wouldnt be functional until long after his teammates returned. But he could already open and close his hand again. It was weak, almost to the point if useless and he would need to wear a carbon fiber cast for another week or two, but it was improving quickly. The only good thing he had going for him was that he had slept through the worst of the pain. 

Even though it was his choice not to go out, Moss wasn't happy about remaining behind. He was letting his team down and Lockspur had opted to let Dahl take the lead on this one. Lockspur had assured Moss they would recon the outside of the aft compartments only and then come right back. A couple of hours in the sun and then they could all go home. Moss agreed, but the idea they would be out there without him made Moss uneasy.

Sitting in mission control as they exited the ship, gave Moss a better understanding of how Dahl had felt when they forced her to stay in the ship on earlier missions. But he was well aware that Dahl was ready to go on those missions. But was she ready to lead this mission?

"I should be going with you," Moss said.

"Aye, Amigo. You said it yourself. You're a fucking anchor. You'd either get yourself killed or one of us killed." 

"Not a good idea," Dahl said, gesturing to a nearby monitor. It showed a high level of seismic activity 30 yards beneath the ship."We can't leave the ship here unattended."

"Luckily, we touched down on a layer of iron ferrite." Lockspur said. "You're safe as long as you stay here."

"But that doesn't mean the little bastards aren't still trying."

"Sure," Moss said, shaking his head. "Just leave me here with a horde of angry raptors trying to crawl up my ass."

"That'll never happen, your heads already up there."

"Let's just move shop." Moss said. "You won't have to walk as far."

"It's not that easy." Dahl said. "The engines are clogged with sand after out last escape attempt, we're sitting too low for a safe lift off. Even if we could lift off. We don't have a detailed map of the substrate good enough to find a safe site to touch down again. At least here, we have a layer of protection between us and the raptors."

"Or anyone else who might be out there," Moss said, thinking about what could be waiting for them out there

"Amigo, not that again." Lockspur replied.

"I heard a woman's voice, Carlos. I'm not making it up."

"You saw the thing that came out of that ship." Lockspur explained. "No one could survive with those things in there." 

"How long will it take to fix the strut?" Dahl asked.

I sent the maintenance bots out. They're repairing the ship as we speak, but it's slow going. The dust and high UV levels are interfering with their functions"

"Best estimate then?"

 "A few hours; a few days." Lockspur said.

"A few days," Dahl blurted.

"If we can't retract the landing strut and close the outer hatch, we can't pressurize the strut assembly bay." Lockspur explained. He saw their confusion. "Without that panel in place when we enter outerspace, we risk the potential of an explosive decompression."

"Is it me," Moss asked, "or does it seem like this place is trying to keep us here?"

"I dont care what this place wants," Dahl said, "When we're finished, we are getting the fuck off this rock."

The eye squinting glare forcing its way through the growing crack above the whining ramp illuminated the inside of the compartment with an explosion of white light that caused Dahl to don a fresh pair of sunglasses. "See if you can pinpoint a path to the tail section." she instructed Moss. A tiny spire on the horizon came into view as the ramp lowered.

"Just start walking that way," Moss said. "You can't miss it." he added, thumbing a gesture over his shoulder. "It's that really tall thing sticking up way down there." He grinned at the instrument cluster in front of him. The open cockpit hatch gave Dahl an unobstructed view of Moss laughing.

"One question," Dahl replied.

"Shoot."

"How many fingers on your left hand?"

Moss looked at his hand and laughed. "Five," he said. "Just five."

"I expected you'd be a little more helpfu on my first mission. Lke how far it is to the target? Is there anything out there that can kill us? And what's the easiest route to target?"

"Ok, then." Moss said, "in that order. It's really far. There's a shitload of raptors between here and there and there's no easy route. Oh, and your bonus answer is being in charge doesn't mean you always get what you want."

"But sometimes you get a hat you need," Lockspur said, tossing her a candy bar. 

Dahl took her glasses off, glaring at Moss and said, "Funny."

Moss turned to her with a smirk and said, "No, mam. It would be highly inappropriate to fuck with a new commanding officer on her first away mission. I would never do that, mam."

Dahl turned to Lockspur with a scowl. "Hey. Don't look at me." he said. "I'm just here for tactical-support and maybe a little conciliatory hand holding if shit goes wrong. I mean, if we live, mam."

"You're lucky you already have a broken arm." Dahl said, shaking her head. "But you… mister. You'd better watch it. And dont call me mam."

"Copy that, mam." Moss said.

"Message received, mam." Lockspur added.

"Just get the aft dish online." Dahl said, rolling her eyes. She was finally one of them.

"Please," Moss repeated.

She rolled her eyes again and said, "Now."

"Affirmative." Moss said, now grimacing at Lockspur with a you-broke-the-fucking-ship expression. "Give me a minute on the aft array. I need to pull up the repair schematics. " Moss pulled up the operating screen for the rear telemetry dish.. "Someone knocked the short range dish out of alignment during our rescue. It needs recalibration."

Lockspur stood next to Dahl at the rear of the ship scowling. He turned to his longtime comrade with a look that clearly meant, shut the hell up, at least you're still alive to fix it. Moss stared back at him, daring Lockspur to respond. "Aye, amigo. Blow me." Lockspur said, giving him the finger.

Moss flashed a giant grin revealing two recently broken and jagged teeth."Amigo," he said, "you can't handle any of this action."

Dahl held up the tailgate remote where they could both see it and clicked the button. "Let's go." she said, telling herself that no matter how old men were, there would always be a 15 year old boy inside them, trying to one up every other 15 year old boy.

"Be careful out there." Moss warned, making eye contact with Dahl one last time before she stepped down off the closing ramp. "UV doesn't effect the big ones."

"Sure it does." Dahl replied, looking at Lockspur with a raised brow. "It pisses them off."

Lockspur exhaled a gravely sarcastic laugh. He didn't want to go out without Moss. The team was stronger with a third set of eyes and three weapons. But he hadn't been joking about Moss's pain level. Severe pain slows reaction times and muddles the mind. Taking him out there was an unnecessary risk that could put them all in jeopardy. Nevertheless, they had always had each other's backs and now there was a blind spot behind him. But he was glad Dahl was there. Lockspur hopped off the edge of the ramp.

"Moss, I need you to check the cloned files."

"What am I looking for?" Moss asked, surprised by her sudden interest.

"Before that thing chased us off the bridge, I saw a name that shouldn't have been there." Dahl answered, following Lockspur over to the edge of the trench as the loud groan of straining hydraulics filled the eerie silence. She peered around, searching for the ears that heard the unfamiliar sound associated with a dinner bell. In a world filled with animals evolved with heightened senses, noise had become the betraying enemy. "Moss, keep the tailgate closed. You don't need any surprises sneaking up behind you."

"Affirmative. No surprises." he said."I'll keep it closed."

Nothing moved in the near distance, but Dahl knew that didn't mean they were alone. They were out there hiding in the shadows, she could feel them watching them. There was no telling how far that layer of iron ferrite extends, it could go on for miles or…" She looked at the ground beneath her feet and was suddenly filled with a fear that made her want to jump on a rock as if a raptor just scurried by.

"Who's name did you see?" Moss asked.

"You'll know it when you see it." Dahl answered, hoping she was wrong. "It could have been a trick of the eye. During the chaos of the attack, it was hard to be sure about anything. Let alone, a single name buzzing by on a list.

But name or not, she couldn't let herself lose focus, the had a mission to complete. And complete it they must, if they were going to get paid and get off this rocky graveyard..Dahl stared into the deep trench and imagined a raptor laying in wait behind every pile of debris. "Just let me know what you find." She said, gesturing for Lockspur to head out.

"Copy that, commander." Moss answered, pulling up the cloned files on a nearby display. He prepared to sort through both the passenger and crew manifests. The list was long, and the knowledge that almost everyone on it had met a terrible fate made him sick.

Lockspur and Dahl stood in the blistering sunlight surveying the debris field for a straightforward route towards their destination. The trench before them was a gauntlet of jagged debris and neither of them could see an easy way through it. The trip would be a long, winding, and dangerous slog.

A 3 kilometer long mound of loose detritus rose out of a 30 meter deep trench. Even years after the crash, the long swath first cut out of rock and hard pack remained mostly intact. Nothing changed on M6-117. There were no high winds or precipitation to move things around.

The trench showed no signs the craft had been ablaze during its descent. The arid soil at the bottom of the deep ditch was still a sun bleached taupe. No explosion on, or after, impact, Lockspur thought. It simply fell from the sky and slid to a rasping stop. Then it sat patiently waiting for the lights to go out. It was as if it followed a predetermined flight path intended to deliver the unlucky survivors straight into the mouths of certain doom.

Dahl stared over the horizon, realizing the answers they came for waited at the beginning of the long trench. But looking down the twisted debris field, she couldn't help thinking, what else is waiting down there? The feeling of being watched was still alive.

After nearly an hour of anxiety plagued progress along the floor of the trench, Dahl felt a raw energy radiating over the nearing horizon. Some inexplicable power was emmenating from the wreckage. It was unlike anything she had ever felt before. The invisible energy coursed along the trench floor, rose high up on the left side of the trench before curling over on them and crashing back down like cascading waves beating against rocky breakers. Dahl's skin turned to gooseflesh; every hair on her body stood on end and a swirling dizziness nearly stole her footing. The relentless energy drew her forwards like tidal forces draw a shore out to sea. It pulled her forward and Lockspur on entry, Dahl's churning stomach rose in her throat. She turned to Lockspur and from the familiar green expression on his face, knew he sensed the energy, too.

Lockspur swallowed down his fear, held out a trembling hand and touched athrnon-existent breeze. He stared at the horizon, thinking, keep going no matter what. "Can you feel that?" he asked.

"Is it coming from the drive core?" Dahl asked, holding up her hand, mimicking his pose. She wanted to go back to the ship and fly away, but couldn't abandon her first mission. The feeling of being pulled into an unending tunnel was growing more disorienting by the second.

"No." Lockspur replied, shaking his head. "You can't feel the effects of radiation leakage. At least, not until body parts start bloating up like balloons and bits and pieces start falling off." He looked to the sky and thought of Sol Lucia and the night he met Lilith for the first time.

"Gross." Dahl thought aloud.

Lockspur stared motionless, as if watching a far off memory play out in the sky. "This energy... whatever it is. Is..." He paused, mid thought. Before leaving Sol Lucia, Lilith told him no matter what you may encounter you have to reach the aft section. Everything hinges on you getting there. At the time, he thought he saw an suggestion of fear and that scared him. He had never imagined Lilith could feel fear. 

"Carlos." Dahl said, snapping him out of his own head. "Do you know what this is?"

"Maybe." he answered, turning back to the trench, half expecting to see someone standing out there on the horizon. There wasn't anyone out there. But he was certain there would be soon. They were getting close. Maybe too close.

"Have you felt anything like this or not?"

"Something like it." he replied, turning with an ominous frown that told a wild tale of drunken exaggeration. "But this is… this is way more powerful than then."

"I thought the story was bullshit." Dahl said.

"Everyone does. But it was true."

Moss told Dahl the story of Lockspur's first encounter with Lilith, as he heard it. Lilith stepped out of the shadows as if emerging straight through the side of the solid brick wall. He said Lockspur felt her long before he saw her. It was hot and disorienting. Lockspur told Johns it was as if Lilith had opened a doorway to hell, stepped through and closed it again. Dahl told Moss that was, nonsense. Popping out of nowhere wasn't the craziest part of Lockspur's story. He said before she evaporated into nothing, she transformed into a monster.

Dahl rolled her eyes and asked, "Do you have any idea what's out there?" Dahl asked, looking at Lockspur scanning the horizon through his rifle scope.

"No idea. But I know whats not out there." he said, turning to her. "Radiation."

"I feel twisted and bent." Dahl said, lifting her rifle and peering down the trench through her scope. "Lile whatever is happening is sucking everything in and pusheing out at the same time."

"It's like being inside a bubble." he said, gesturing for her to follow him towards the horizon. "Come on."

"You don't still want to go down there?"

"No," he admitted, walking off towards the hirizon.

"Whatever's happening out there, isn't natural." Dahl added, following him towards the trench as the tiny hairs on the tops of her arms bristled as if an army of wriggling ants scurried up her arms. It was unpleasant and she itched her forearms until they were red and raw. She wanted nothing more than to go back. The sensation was maddening. Even worse than the chaffing sand and sweat. She was certain every cell in her body was being turned inside out.

Lockspur dug wildly at the underside of his forearm. Blood dripped into pale dusty sand. He saw her discomfort and said, "The feeling passes." He teetered his head and added, "At least it did the last time I gelt it."

Dahl saw the blaring red boil on the underside of his forearm and asked, "Does it hurt?"

"No." he replied, covering the sore. "You can check it when we get back." Making his way up the high side of the trench.

"Is everything I thought I knew about her wrong?" Dahl asked, turning to Lockspur as if inviting confirmation. "Is any of this even possible?" She had known Lady Hemmingford for forever and never considered Lockspur's outlandish story to be true. 

Lady Hemmingsford was a noble. She was one of the last great English houses to survive the great land war in Europe. Dahl thought John's and Lilith had told Lockspur to spread the story to frighten the criminal scum they hunted. An unstoppable merc with the power to pop up anywhere or at any time. How do you run from someone with that power? Dahl had always thought of Lilith as powerful and ruthless benefactor. But even so, Lilith had always treated Dahl like a granddaughter. Johns had told her, Lady Hemmingford is a good woman. If you ever need help, go to her. She will protect you. But even though Dahl had seen her nurturing side. She had also seen her pathological need for justice and even vengeance. She hated criminals and wanted them all to pay for their crimes, for their sins. That side of Lilith Hemmingford, scared her.

"There's something wrong with Lilith, isn't there?"

"It's fairly safe to say, there's a lot more going on with her than any of us would like to admit." Lockspur answered. "But whatever this is, I don't think this has anything to do with Lilith. This is... big. Way too big."

"Could it be something to do with the eclipse? With this system? Maybe a magnetic field coming off the planets."

"You mean did the heavens suddenly align and electrocute us? Doubtful. That kind of energy would be deadly. I think this is more like the feeling you get when activating a jump drive. It feels like space is folding in on itself."

"Christ," Dahl said, shaking her head at the absurdity. "That sounds nuts."

Moss held up his hands, feeling the energy course over his body in waves and said, "Does it?"

Dahl's rifle was at the ready, her heart beat faster as the waves crashed in rhythmic, undulating pulses, filling her chest with fear. She stopped every so often, looking from object to object, dirt mound to dirt mound, ensuring there would be no more nasty little surprises jumping out to attack them. She'd had quite enough excitement at the first site, and would bear the scars of the last encounter for the rest of her days. Her injury was deep and ugly, and it wasn't the kind of wound that said, you're a badass; it screamed, you're damn lucky to still be alive. And she was lucky; and she knew it. They were all lucky to be alive.

A line of swirling dust devils meandered aimlessly across the horizon and Dahl couldn't help thinking, whatever is out there, it knows we're coming. Every time an energy wave passed through a dust devil, the swirling column distorted wildly for a split second and then went back to its original shape, continuing on.

Lockspur stopped at the lower edge of the trench, studying debris patterns and trying to riddle out the big picture. Finding out what had happened was only a part of the cover mission that had brought them to this inhospitable hell hole. But still, he was interested in what had brought the giant ship down. He asked himself, could it have been the pulse they were feeling? Had the energy altered the gravitational effects on the crashing ship, bringing it in for a soft touchdown? He couldn't be certain. Either way, he was just going through the motions. A great pretender, perpetrating a flimsy ruse that did little to alleviate his growing sense of being a traitor.

"What is it?" Dahl asked.

The orange sky drew the moisture from his parched mouth like a nun drew guilt from a choir boy caught with a porn mag. He wanted this mission to be over. He wanted to go home and forget this place, but he feared the coming meeting and the thing that waited for him on the horizon. And now, he feared Dahl was beginning to see through his flimsy excuses. She was smart. Most of the time; she was too smart. 

He yanked the canteen from his belt, took a long, cooling swig and then tossed it to Dahl. She took a drink and fastened it to her belt, staring out daisidly. "Any ideas?" she asked.

"The aft section disconnected after it struck the ground." he said, the roughness of his deep voice rousing her from her drifting thoughts. "Look here." he added, moving the end of his rifle barrel in a large arc to depict the swirling direction of the deep carved out trench. "As the rear section dug in, it raised the nose of the forward compartment up, allowing it to slide along. The rear sections tore free and then dug in. With no anchor to slow the command deck down; it slid for miles. It's a miracle the two sections didn't tear themselves to pieces."

"You still want to go down there?" Dahl asled again, in a foreboding tone. Even though the waves were subsiding, she still felt it was unsafe to get any closer. There was no telling what was happening over the horizon or how it would affect them.

"Fuck no." he admitted. "But we need to learn if what's happening now is in any way connected to the original crash."

"You think this is what brought the ship down ?"

Lockspur shrugged. 

"But is it safe? This doesn't feel safe." she said, staring at the gigantic wreckage, looming on the nearing horizon. 

"I suppose that depends on your definition of safe." Lockspur said, head teetering on his shoulders as he exhaled a half-hearted laugh. Even though Lilith had told him it would be safe, he really wasn't sure. He couldn't say, but he had a wild theory as to what had happened to allow the ship to reach the surface. And it was nuts, but if he was right, it would explain a lot about what had happened and what was happening now. "There are forces at play here we just don't understand." he added, more speaking to himself than her.

"I don't care about anything other than if we'll be alive tomorrow?"

"Odds are in our favor." Lockspur said, kneeling down to scoop up a handful of parched soil from the trench floor. As he let if fall, he pointed his handheld scanner at the dust and said, "There's no ash. If the ship was burning up on entry, there would be ash everywhere. And the scanner's not registering any fallout. None. Nada. As fas as any long-term side effects from whatever this energy pulse is. I'd say, no."

"That's a big gamble." Dahl said, absentmindedly rubbing her arms.

He shrugged. "Maybe. But it's been years since I felt something like this and I'm still here."

"You said it yourself. Your exposure rate back then was limited."

"Fair enough." he admitted, looking from the looming horizon back to the tiny ship in the growing distance. Lilith was very clear in her instructions. Get there, someone will contact you. He had to keep going. He held out his hand and said, "Whatever is happening out there is fading. By the time we get there, it should have dissipated completely."

"Just because we can't feel it, doesn't mean it's gone." she said to herself.

"True." he agreed, looking over her shoulder in the direction of the aft compartments. Their ship was behind them. Safety was the behind them. Home was behind them. He shook his head, frowning at Dahl, and said, "No answers; no pay. But I understand your concerns. There is no shame in turning back. You can go and I'll be back when I'm done looking around."

Dahl's mouth dropped, her face reddened and the ghost of an expletive crossed her face. He hadn't meant to imply anything negative, but his words struck her across as if he'd called her a coward. "I'm no coward. I just wanted to know the risks."

"I never meant to imply you were." Lockspur replied. "But you're right. Best case scenario, we come back healthy. Worst case-"

"We don't come back at all." Dahl cut in, finishing his sentence.

"There's a lot of unknowns out there," he admitted, gesturing over her shoulder with a grim expression. "And tho closer we get the more its becoming apparent, this wasn't just a crash. Something brought that ship down."

They both knew the crash made no sense. How could a nuclear-powered vessel 3 times larger than the Chrysler building fall out of the sky at 25,000 MPH and not explode or, at the very least, burn up in the atmosphere?"

"Any idea where that pulse came from?" Dahl asked, holding out a hand as if trying to get a bearing on the power ebbing over the horizon.

He said nothing. His expression was unreadable. But Dahl suspected he had a crazy idea. One he was unwilling to share at the moment. Fuck it, she thought, maybe he'll share it later. "Why is there no radiation?" she asked, kneeling down to inspect the soil for herself. "There should be trace amounts of radiation coming off the aft compartment. We should be close enough by now to pick it up."

"We should" he agreed, walking to the top side of the trench with an expression of doubt. He pointed Moss' favorite handheld scanner at the compartment, increased its gain, and took several lengthy readings. All of which seemed to worsen his mood exponentially. "Zero fucking rads." he said, wishing he hadn't checked. But he had, and now it was confirmed. No radiation meant no drive core, no cooling system and no containment storage units had entered the atmosphere. And that was not possible. He said nothing of the missing drive. "Whatever happened to that ship had nothing to do with a hull breech. Whatever took it out of the sky is far more powerful than pirates or anything mother nature could throw at it."

"Maybe it's not working?" she asked, holding out a hand.

Lockspur tossed the scanner to her and said, "Here. Take a look. It's cheap shit, but it works well enough for something like this." He glimpsed the ominous expression she tried to hide and added, "For fuck's sake. What now?" He hoped it was nothing, but saw she had just realized something, he was sure he didn't want to hear.

"I think I know why she sent us here." Dahl answered, remembering the quick glimpse of the freighter's manifest from earlier. "And it has nothing to do with Will."

"She sent us." Lockspur repeated, with a raised brow and tilted head. "Why the change of heart?"

"I was wrong." Dahl admitted. "At the time, I thought it was Johns's doing. But now…" She paused, the awkward silence seemed to stretch out as her thoughts swam in a murk of coalescing realization. "She's always scared me. A little. Not because she's ever done anything. More because she's... "

"Powerful." he said, finishing her sentence. "Intimidating in ways that are unexplainable."

Dahl nodded and said, "She's everything I thought I aspired to be. But..."

"It's Ok. She scares everyone." he said. "Even me." he admitted, words escaping his lips before he realized he uttered them into existence. He laughed and added, "It's sort of her super power. She exudes some kind of don't fuck with me pheromone. And there's that other one too. But let's not talk about that."

Dahl watched him spin in a circle, staring through his scope as if searching for a creature more elusive than bio-raptors. "What are you looking for?" She could tell it wasn't raptors. "There isn't another human being within a billion miles of us."

"I'm not so sure about that." he said, refusing to end his hasty search for the voice behind the hatch. He had argued with Moss, telling him it was his imagination and he still believed that. But he didnt tell his teammates someone was here. "We are not alone. Moss was right." Lilith had said tell no one. But Dahl was closing in on the truth.

"That's not what said earlier."

"Let's go." Lockspur said, lowering his weapon and walking off towards the engine compartment without Dahl. "I want to know what, or who, is down there."

"There's no one down there." she insisted, in a tone clearly meant to convince herself more than him.

"Just because you call me paranoid, doesnt mean someone isnt after me." he said, turning to her with eyebrows furrowed in certainty. "But you can feel something out there. I know you can."

"Let's just figure out what happened and get back to the ship. I want off this rock. Like yesterday."

"Ill take point." he said, pulling out a pair of binoculars, scanning the horizon. Lockspur let the binoculars fall at his side, and the swung as he walked away.

When they were 300 meters away from the aft compartment, he could make out hundreds of tiny holes. "It looks like it's been through a meat grinder," he said, pointing at the gigantic tower in the nearing distance. " The report may have been right. Looks like a meteor strike from here."

"Dahl," Moss called over the comms. "I have the data you requested and you won't believe what I found."

"Shit," Lockspur whispered to himself. "What now?" He turned back to the ship lifted his binoculars and saw Moss standing behind the windscreen staring back through his own binoculars. He offered him a friendly gesture that Moss was happy to return.

"Fucking men" Dahl said.

"Sorry, mam," Moss said.

"How are doing?"

"Hitting on all cylinders."

Lockspur handed Dahl the binoculars and said, "See for yourself. He's full of shit. He looks like ass end of a-"

"I got it." Dahl snapped, cutting him off as she peered through the binoculars. "How can you tell he's not better?"

"Because the last time I went out without him, he mooned me."

"Did both if you stop aging at 15?" she said.

Lockspur laughed. "12."

"Go ahead, Moss." Dahl said, clickinv her fingers at Lockspur who had begun walking off. When he turned around, she signaled him to hold up and tapped a finger on her headset. She watched him hop onto a sizable chunk of debris and scan several nearby piles of twisted hull through his scope. "What did you find?" she asked.

"Riddick." Moss said, at such a low volume it was almost as if he didn't want anyone to hear the name. Will was transporting Riddick"

Every mercenary in the galaxy knew the name and Riddick's reputation as a cold blooded killer.

"Amigo, did you say Riddick? He was here?"

"Yes. Will was transporting him to the Vega colony. A super Max." Moss said, stressing the name as he transmitted the information directly to the data pads on their wrists. "It was a last-minute booking. He paid a shitload of credits to secure safe passage through the ghost lanes."

"You call this safe passage?" Dahl said, gesturing at the scattered rubble.

Moss ignored her. "But that's not the only name I found."

"I heard Will wouldn't leave him alone." Lockspur said, turning to Dahl with a foreboding squint. "Stupid fucker hounded Riddick from one end of the galaxy to the other. It was like he had something to prove to the father he never knew."

"He had a fucking death wish." Moss snapped. "Poke a wounded animal enough times, and it will eventually fight back."

"Bad genetics." Lockspur added. "John's is a hard head, too."

"Bad genetics." Dahl repeated, in a tone suggesting she was about to come to John's rescue again. "Bullshit."

"Kid," Lockspur said, and gave her time to decide if she wanted to go off about his use of the word. When it was clear she wasn't going to, he continued, "A long time ago your uncle was a fall down drunk."

"And not the cheerful kind." Moss added. "As he tells it, he was a mean bastard. Didn't care about anything or anyone, just the drink."

Dahl's face flushed, and she snapped, "I've never seen him drink."

"Lucky you," Lockspur countered in a sarcastic tone. "And just to be clear. Just because I've never seen a billion credits. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

"Oh ha-ha," she snapped, in a sarcastic tone that drew the words out long and mean.

Before she continued, Moss said, "As Johns tells it, your new Aunt saved him from himself." Johns thought his 2nd wife read people a little too easily. It was a gift he couldn't explain. "One day, when he lay passed out in the park."

"Covered in his own shit and piss." Lockspur said.

"And puke." Moss added.

"A woman hauled his ass off the bench, stood him up and told him to cut the shit." Lockspur went on.

"That's it. Just cut the shit. Then she turned around and walked away, leaving him standing there swaying in the breeze."

"Stinking of-"

"We get it." Dahl snapped, scowling at Lockspur.

"But you don't," Moss added. "Because she did something to him. Right there and right then."

"Not another drink from that day forward." Lockspur said."

"Hasn't touched a drop since."

"A year later-" Lockspur began.

"When he's clean and sober?" Moss cut in. "And not stinking like a blueplate special served at the local outhouse."

"He sees the same woman sitting on the same park bench and the rest is history." Moss added, still looking through his optics.

"I didn't know any of that." Dahl said.

"It's not the kind of details you share." Moss replied. "Especially with the ones you love."

"So, you wanted to know what happened to Will." Lockspur said.

 "It's pretty obvious." Moss said. "Riddick happened."

"Amigo, you don't think..." Lockspur stopped mid sentence, not wanting to say anything that may upset Dahl.

"Poke a bear." Moss said.

"Don't assume shit. We still don't know anything." Dahl snapped, not liking the sudden sidebar conversation going on without her. "We could still find intel..."

"Unlikely." Moss said, remembering the time Lilith told them to stay away from Riddick. "Lilith warned us off Riddick. Shit, if she won't go after him, no one should." He had never told anyone that he actually thought Lilith was the Dark Athena, but he was certain she knew he did, and she liked that he did.

"And the other name?" Dahl asked.

"Probably not the one you saw. But it' " Moss said, "And there's visual confirmation, as well. The ship's emergency surveillance cameras caught a few images of a kid."

"Is it her? Did she look OK?" Dahl asked, the excitement in her voice making her tone go up sharply.

"She didn't even look like a girl. If I hadn't known her before she ran away, I wouldn't have looked twice. She was almost unrecognizable."

Lockspur turned to Dahl wearing such an ominous expression it froze her in her tracks. He knew something and it wasn't a good thing. "Who are we talking about?" he demanded, voice so low and gravelly it made her momentarily frightened.

"Kyra." Moss answered.

"Just tell me if she was okay?" Dahl asked again, still frozen in Lockspur's gaze as his normally toasted almond complexion went a holy fuck shade of he's gonna explode crimson.

A momentary silence filled the comms and then Moss said, "She had a shaved head and wore welding goggles. I have no idea what that shit was all about. Maybe it was some kind of disguise. If it was, iit was a damn good one. I looked at her image three times before I knew who I was looking at."

"Welding goggles?" Dahl said, thinking she had misunderstood.

"Regardless of her questionable wardrobe choices," he continued. "It's pretty clear, the boy in the footage is actually Kyra." Moss continued, forwarding the vid to their handsets. They stood in the glare of the blistering suns, watching their video feeds with a mixture of amazement and disbelief.

"It is her," Lockspur said, exhaling sharply. "This is bad."

"Are you insane? This is great." Dahl blurted, turning to him in wide-eyed disbelief. "We finally found her, and you think it's bad? We've been searching the Galaxy non-stop, for how long?" She turned back in the direction of Moss and asked, "What was the name she used to book passage?"

"She booked passage under the name, Jacks."

"She took his name." Dahl thought out loud, staring down at the face of a shaved head 12-year-old girl wearing welding goggles. "It's quite the getup?"

"You think this is great." Lockspur blared. "It's him." Lockspur answered, grimace contorting into a look of shock. "She's emulating him." He squinted at the image on his wrist, wishing he hadn't come. What the fuck have I gotten myself into this time, he thought. First the secret mission and now this. What the fuck was next?

"Him, who?" Dahl asked, as if the concept of emulating a man was offensive to her. The idea made her suddenly jealous. The sudden jealousy led her to wonder what ugly family secret had they hidden from her now and from the look on Lockspur's face, did she really want to know what that secret was? She hoped her family was not a white washed illusion seen through a haze of half truths and careful omissions.

"This mission has nothing to do with finding Will. This is about finding them." Lockspur said, looking at Dahl as if she surely must know what he was referring to.

"Are you getting too much sun? Do we need to go back?"

How could Dahl have lived in their house as part of their family and not known who Kyra really was? Not knowing the lies and secrets, he thought. Lies only serve to push us away from the people we love. And for the first time in a long while, Lockspur was mad at Johns. Really mad at him for keeping secrets. "This whole fiasco, all the deaths, all the suffering, it's about bringing them together." Lockspur said, in a voice barely below a controlled freak out.

"Them who?" Dahl demanded, the surprised tone in her wavering voice causing Lockspur to go slack jawed.

"She doesn't know." he said, absolutely dumbfounded by the revelation of her sheer ignorance. "How can you not know?" he asked.

"Will you please tell me what he's babbling about?" she asked Moss, gesturing at Lockspur as if he were losing his mind.

"No idea."

Lockspur ignored them and continued, "Kyra runs away and just ends up on the one ship in the Galaxy transporting the one guy she's never supposed to meet. And then... she shaves her head, throws on a pair of goggles and runs around pretending to be what? His little sidekick. His little protege. They don't even know each other, but here she is, daddy's little girl."

"What are you talking about?"

"Kyra was here." Lockspur replied, pointing at the ground. "Riddick was here." he added, still pointing at the ground as if that should mean something. "Same time; same place; same transport. The odds of that happening are 1 in not a goddamn chance. But here they are hanging out together at the ass end of fucking nowhere. Best buds on a sun bleached holiday hellhole."

"Amigo, calm down."

He reeled around, facing Moss in the ship and said, "I overheard Lilith telling John they should never meet." He pointed up at the sky as if pinpointing Lilith on the other side of the Galaxy and added, "She said if they did, nasty shit would happen. Like apocalyptic shit."

"What the fuck are you blathering on about?" Dahl demanded.

"Crap," Moss added, talking over her. "He must have known we'd pick up their scent."

"Seriously." Lockspur replied, as if Moss were being purposely obtuse. "What is it with you two. It was all her. This is Lilith's doing."

John's step daughter. Kyra had run away from home 6 months prior to Will's disappearance. And the only reason Johns had gone back to being a mercenary, a profession his new wife vehemently despised, was to get Lilith's help to find Kyra and bring her home. But her help came with a single stipulation: If I help you bring Kyra home, you come back to the business for good. He agreed without hesitation. Such is the love of a father. Even a stepfather.

"Who is Riddick to Kyra?" Dahl asked, face flashing red.

"It was Lilith. She told us to stay away from him. And all the while, she had Will on Riddick's ass. She used Will to get Riddick into position. She sent everyone out on missions the day Kyra ran away, and then aborted most of the contracst, the day after she ran off without a trace."

"What are you saying?" Moss asked.

"She set this meeting up. Shes responsible for everything. She sent us her to find them."

"That's a neat superpower?" Dahl replied, shaking her head. "She can see the future? Next you'll say she caused the meteor shower that downed this ship."

"No meteor shower downed the Hunter Gratzner." Lockspur blared, as if Dahl were being ridiculous. "And the Goddamn proof is out there." he added, gesturing down the trench.

"So, according to you, Lilith set all this up prior to Will and Riddick booking passage?"

"So, you think this is a coincidence?" Lockspur asked, rolling his eyes and risking Dahl's don't patronize me wrath. "Riddick and Kyra popping up in the middle of the ghost lanes?"

"What's the big deal?" Dahl asked, clearly not seeing a problem.

"Isn't it obvious," he replied.

"Isn't what obvious?" Dahl snapped back as if Lockspur was purposely being obtuse.

"That every step daughter has an actual father, too." Lockspur replied, shaking his head at Dahl.

"Are you saying-"

"There's darkness in Lilith." Lockspur said, cutting her off, as a look of realization crossed Dahl's face. "There's no mistaking that. But this would take some kind of next level intel to pull this shit off."

"Why send us out here if she set it up to begin with?" Moss asked.

"Something went wrong." Lockspur said to himself. "The crash wasn't part of the plan or..." He paused, staring out at the horizon and thinking about their true purpose for coming. The meeting and the thing in his arm. "Something else is going to happen."

"Compadre," Moss said, there's nothing going on here. No one could survive in this place. We're just here to pick up their trail." Moss replied. "Will's dead, and now Lilith needs new bloodhounds to take up the chase."

"Wrong." Lockspur said, mind connecting a line of dots only he could see. "You said it yourself, amigo. You heard a woman's voice behind that hatch. She's here."

"Lilith, " Moss blurted, "No way." The comms channel went quiet, then he said, "At least, we know why Johns dumped 250,000 credits to get us all the way out here."

"Johns didn't dump shit into this mission." Lockspur replied. "This is all her. Johns doesnt have capital need to pay gor this."

"Do we know if any of them survived?." Dahl asked, staring up at Lockspur as if not wanting to hear any more ludicrous hypotheses about Lilith. God, if she had to hear anymore about the Lady in black or the Dark Athena, she was going to scream.

"Dahl." Moss said, pulling her back to their conversation. "There's a list of impact survivors entered by acting Captain, Carolyn Fry."

"Did Will make it?"

"He on the list of passengers who survived the initial crash. But there's no list of who made it off-world."

Lockspur stood on the debris peering at the aft compartment. He turned to Dahl. "Johns said the company report contained a 2nd report from a Colonial Marines battle cruiser that found a derelict ship drifting 2.3 light years from here. It was 3 days after the Hunter Gratzner crash. The Kublai Khan, was found with a single mercenary aboard. The rest of the crew were either dead or in cryo sleep. The lone survivor..." he paused, trying to recall the name.

"Alexander Toombs," Moss said.

"Right." Lockspur said. "Toombs reported that an unknown man, a cleric named Imam and a boy named Jacks murdered his boss and escaped in a stolen shuttle. The shuttle the three suspects were picked up in was still aboard. The craft was registered to a mining company on M6-117."

"The un-named man was described as a large Caucasian, late 20s, muscular build, silver eyes that relected light." Moss replied. "There was only one person on the Hunter Gratzner that fit that description." Moss added.

"I'm sorry, Dahl. Three people made it out, and Will wasn't one of them."

"If that's so, why would Riddick take two witnesses who can report he's still alive?" Dahl asked.

"No idea. Maybe he's not a bad guy." Moss said, and a shallow laugh escaped his lungs.

"Listen," Lockspur replied, holding up three fingers. "There are three constants in this Galaxy:"

"Oh shit, here we go." Dahl said, with a snarky smirk. "He's invoking the 3 constants."

"Stay away from the Necros, don't cross the Lady in Black, and never… ever... fuck with Riddick."

"And not necessarily in that order." Moss added.

"Sounds like the 3 rules of paranoia, superstition and bullshit." Dahl replied, gesturing for Lockspur to get down. "And just to clarify, why do the 3 constants keep changing? Because, we have to be upwards of 300 constants by now."

Moss snickered and said, "He likes to think of them as common sense guidelines to help us reach a healthy and happy tomorrow."

"Sure, Carlos." Dahl replied, rolling her eyes. "Any other words of wisdom?"

"I do," Lockspur replied, jumping down from his pulpit. "Never ignore the three constants." He walked off towards the large mound of dirt on the horizon, readying his rifle for anything that may jump from behind the minefield of debris littering their path. "I didn't see any movement between here and there. I'm taking that as a positive sign."

"Is that a constant?" Dahl asked, quickly catching up to him. He said nothing. "Fine. I'm keeping my finger on the trigger."

"Good idea." he said, gesturing for her to come up beside him. "Just don't stand behind me."

Over the next 25 minutes, the two of them negotiated the debris field without incident. The further they went the more Lockspur slowed down. By the time they reached the engine compartment, he had developed a limp and gripping his side. When they stopped, he took a blue pill out of his left breast pocket, put it in his mouth and washed it down with a mouthful of piss warn water.

The compartment had torpedoed into massive hole 20 feet deeper than the lowest part of the trench. Dahl peered over the edge, scanning the area for a way to make certain they could get out if they went down. There was no simple way down or out of the trench, and once inside, they would have to make their way back to the ship in a dugout left in the forward compartment's wake.

Lockspur pointed at an open cargo hatch on the top, port-side rear corner and said, "If we want to get in, we need to figure a way to get up there." The menacingly open hatch revealed a patch of darkness inside. It mocked them from nearly 200 feet above the surface. The hanging hatch appeared badly damaged; it was more burst out than swung open. But with a whole lot of effort, they could reach the opening safely.

"Can you take readings from here?" Dahl asked, not wanting to take anymore unnecessary chances.

"Sure." Lockspur said, grinning at Dahl. "But does that mean you don't want to go inside?"

She shook her head weakly and said, "I dont want to go in there. I've had enough excitement for one trip." She peered up the twisted siding and realized the climb would be dangerous, and probably, impossible. Maybe not for her, but certainly for Lockspur. "Besides. It can't be safe in there."

"Definitely." Lockspur replied, removing the scanner from a pouch on his side. "The ship is theirs by now." He held out the scanner as if pointing a sidearm and studied it with growing concern. "Can't get an accurate internal reading. Too much structural interference." he said, "I cant tell you how many raptors are in there. But I can tell you what isn't in there." He showed Dahl the readout on his scanner and said, "Not a trace of radiation. Zero."

"That's good."

"That's impossible." Lockspur said, touching her arm before Dahl vaulted over the edge of the trench. "Wait. Look at the aft hull plating. This wasn't a meteor strike; this is weapons fire. And that's not the worst thing going on here."

"There's more?"

He nodded. "No radiation means the engines, fuel rods, and cooling system are gone."

"Gone. How's that possible?" Dahl replied, staring up at the swiss cheese remains of the enormous aft compartment. There were hundreds, if not thousands of tiny uniform holes letting in laser thin beams of light. The blast, whatever it was, left everything inside the compartment riddled with holes.

"Thats the problem. It's not possible."

Dahl turned to Lockspur with a look of shock growing on her face, and said, "It would take round-the-clock maintenance crews a month in dry dock to remove that propulsion system."

"More like 3 months." Lockspur stressed, removing the tip of his fingers from her arm. "The company discontinued production of the old series 1s, after retrofit crews refused to strip them down after they were decommissioned."

"Are you sure the engines are missing?"

Lockspur gestured at the scanner and said, "Im not saying anything. The scanner is. See. No radiation. The propulsion systems in these old clunkers are volatile. Not being in there is the only reason this is in one piece is because the propulsion system didn't go into a critical meltdown."

Dahl gestured around at the extensive damage. "You call this one piece?"

"I call this impossible. When the old series-one's detonated, they went up with a blast equivalent to that of a Hiroshima bomb; the remaining fragments burned up in the upper atmosphere. Not a lot of ground damage. Great light show. But the EMP fried all electronics ground side and cast huge clouds of radiation over half a planet."

"Then, how did it get here?" Dahl asked, mesmerized by the sheer size of the aft compartment. It towered above the deep trench.

"That's my point." Lockspur replied, looking around as if something was watching them. "It can't be here. Whoever or whatever had the power to remove those engines in mid-flight isn't natural."

"Horse shit." Dahl replied, searching her thoughts for the explanation that would never come.

"Fine. You're clever, chica. Explain it."

After conceding the implausible answer, she pointed at the holes and asked, "That's what downed the ship?"

"It certainly initiated the alarms," he said, pointing to the back of the compartment. "Those holes would have led to a catastrophic decompression, triggering a ship wide alert and waking key personnel."

"Why didn't the crew react before the ship went down?"

"They were in stasis." Lockspur replied. "The ship's computer would have awoken them. Hell, you just came out of stasis withdrawal. Could you have saved our ship if it was hit by a meteor strike?"

"No."

"By the time they were on their feet and figured out what was happening, it was already too late. Most of them were already dead; they just didn't know it yet. And if I'm right and there are no engines in there. They were operating on battery backups alone. This thing came down dead stick and even under those circumstances, the ship would burn up on re-entry. This ship entered the moon's atmosphere at quarter of the speed of light."

"What's going on here?" Moss asked himself, watching them through the long-range camera array, as they made their way towards the horizon. Outside, he caught an occasional glimpse of the maintenance bots still cleaning out the intakes. "Dahl," he called out and waited for a response. No answer. "Compadre, can you hear me?" No answer. Even though he could see them, he couldn't hear them and they couldn't hear him. He became worried. Something was preventing them from communicating.

"There is some dark shit at play here." Lockspur said, jumping over the edge of the trench and sliding to a stop at the bottom of the lower trench. They were in deep now. Nearly a 150 feet beneath the surface.

Dahl slid to a stop at Lockspur's side and said, "Your superstitious nature is getting the better of you again."

"Is it?" he replied, holding out his scanner and gesturing for her to come look. As they approached the ship, he gestured towards the myriad of holes. "This damage isn't consistent with what you'd normally find after a meteor strike. The company would have seen this and known that. The report is false. This was an obvious attack. And anyone who saw the report would not have known that." He looked at Dahl and added, "So... why spend all the coin getting us way out here? Seems fishy. Unless Lilith knows more than she letting on."

"I hope you're wrong." Dahl replied.

"I'm not.." he said, walking closer to get a better look. "See here. While these strikes are consistent with a meteor shower pattern, the impacts are too uniform in size and shape. Anyone who has been in a battle would immediately ecognize this kind of damage. Meteorites are anything but uniform; they are random. "He pointed the scanner at the entry holes and added, "And look at this." he continued, jamming the scanner into her hands. "See for yourself. The residue around the penetrations is manmade, not a naturally occurring mineral."

"What's that prove?" Dahl asked.

"Necromongers are the only military that uses this type of long range projectile." He answered.

"Those weird religious fanatics from Asylum shot the Hunter Gratzner down."

"That's my guess." Lockspur answered, gesturing for Dahl to follow him back towards the ship.

"This area is teaming with pirates. They attack ships all the time. Maybe they made it look like a Necro attack?" Dahl asked.

"Possible. But why? Theres no reason for them ti bother." he answered, thinking hard. "These weren't pirates. And probably not Necros, either." Lockspur replied, waving away her oncoming attempt to argue. "While both could have attacked this ship; neither could remove the engines in the time between the hull breach and impact. Thats a technology neither possess. Thats a tech no one possesses."

"So," Dahk said, "if we find the missing engines, we find the individuals responsible for the crash."

Lockspur shook his head at Dahl and said, "No one will ever find those engines. They're gone."

"Then why go to all the trouble to make it look like an accident?" Dahl asked ."What were they after?"

"Or who were they after?"