"You're welcome, Dana. Try to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be difficult."
He left, and the door sealed behind him with a hiss of hydraulics.
I looked at the other women—at Jalina's exhausted face, at Bea's carefully controlled expression, at Elena's barely contained fury, and felt the command pressing down on my shoulders.
We'd survived the wormhole. Survived the crash. Survived three weeks on a death planet.
Now we had to survive becoming something entirely new.
5
Er'dox
The detention protocol lasted exactly forty-seven minutes before I overrode it.
Captain Tor'van's standing orders were clear: unknown species remained in medical observation until cleared for general population integration. Standard procedure. Sensible procedure. Procedure I was actively violating by accessing the medical bay's security systems and unlocking the door that separated the humans from the rest of Mothership.
"You're going to get reprimanded," Krev observed from my workstation, not looking up from his own console.
"Noted."
"Captain specifically said?—"
"I heard what the Captain said." I finished bypassing the final security layer, watching the medical bay door's status change from locked to accessible. "I also heard what he didn't say."
Krev finally looked up, his metallic green skin reflecting the console lights. "Which was?"
"That we can't keep them confined indefinitely. They're not prisoners. They're refugees who've just learned they're stranded in the wrong galaxy with no way home and no resources tobargain with. Treating them like potential threats will only make integration more difficult."
"Integration." Krev's tone suggested he found the concept amusing. "You sound like you're planning to adopt them."
"I'm planning to evaluate them. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
I didn't answer, because I wasn't entirely sure myself. The humans had been aboard Mothership for six hours now, enough time for Zorn to complete basic medical assessments, enough time for all sixteen of them to go through the VR communication pods, enough time for Dana to translate the devastating truth to her people that they were never going home.
I'd watched that conversation through the medical bay's observation window. Watched Dana's careful control as she explained their situation in that melodic human language, watched the breakdown ripple through the group like structural failure. Some cried. Some went silent. One woman, Elena, the pilot, had punched the wall hard enough that Zorn insisted on scanning her hand for fractures.
And Dana had held herself together through all of it, providing strength for her people even as I could see her own foundation cracking.
Forty-seven minutes of observation. Forty-seven minutes of watching them process trauma that would have broken most species. Enough time for me to make a decision that was probably going to cost me a formal reprimand from the Captain.
"I'm going down there," I announced, standing. "To begin preliminary evaluations."
"You mean you're going to interfere with medical observation protocols."
"I mean I'm going to do my job. Captain Tor'van wants them integrated. Integration requires evaluation. Evaluation requires access." I headed for the door. "You have Engineering."
Krev's response was a grunt that could have meant agreement or resignation or both.
The corridors between Engineering and Medical Bay took three minutes to traverse at standard walking speed. I found myself moving faster, drawn by something I didn't have a name for. Curiosity, maybe. Professional interest. The engineer in me wanted to understand their technology, wanted to see what a completely foreign civilization had developed.
The door to the medical bay opened at my approach, my security clearance overriding the observation lock. Inside, the humans had claimed a corner of the bay, defensive positioning, backs to the wall, able to see all approaches. Smart.
They noticed me immediately. All conversation stopped. Sixteen pairs of eyes tracked my movement with varying degrees of fear and suspicion.
Dana was sitting on one of the medical beds, reviewing something on a datapad Zorn must have provided. She looked up at my entrance, and I saw the calculation happen behind her eyes. Threat assessment. Risk evaluation. The same analysis I'd run a hundred times in first contact scenarios.
