The rest of them, however, would not. They would die—with the possible exception of Kira who had surmounted similar situations in the past.
She didn’t want to, though. She’d been there and done the lone survivor thing. It sucked.
If the ship went down with everyone on it, she’d go with it.
“You’d sacrifice everyone on board?” Jin asked.
There was a note of disillusionment behind Jin’s question that made Kira aware just how important the answer was to him. In a way, Jin was slower to trust than even Kira. He’d been hurt too many times in the past by those who denied his existence. They couldn’t conceive of a drone possessing a soul or self-will.
Those who did often looked at him like he was a monster.
Jin’s “spying” was his attempt to understand the character of the man who may have given him life.
If Torvald failed Jin’s assessment, that would be it. Jin would never reveal their relationship. Torvald would never learn what happened to his firstborn.
“The Hakeeb are programmed to respond when they sense a danger to the planet. I would be doing a disservice to those below by allowing a threat to land.”
Torvald’s answer surprised Kira. She had thought he would ignore Jin as many Tuann did.
He didn’t. Even better, his answer was reasonable and one she’d likely make if she was in the same position.
Jin too.
Kira kept her smile to herself, relieved that Jin wouldn’t write Torvald off quite yet.
“Whatever triggered the mines has to be located on the outside of the ship,” Kira said, thinking out loud.
Jin made a soft sound of discovery. “The proximity alerts. They went off when we were leaving the station.”
Kira nodded in agreement. “That’s what I was thinking as well.”
Something had set them off. Kira was betting whatever it was, it was responsible for their current predicament.
With a renewed sense of purpose, Kira unmuted the line. “Graydon, can you get a close-up view of the belly of our ship?”
Graydon nodded to someone outside off screen.
“How is my package doing?” Graydon asked while they waited.
Kira flashed him a humorless smile. “Still in one piece. Though I can’t promise it’ll remain that way.”
Graydon’s mouth opened only for him to pause as someone murmured something off screen. “Send it.” To Kira, “I think this is your problem.”
Kira leaned forward as a video feed of the underside of her ship took up one side of the screen. The video feed magnified several times until a flower bud no bigger than the size of Kira’s palm came into focus. Vines spread out beneath it, burrowing into the metal of her ship.
Raider’s curse was heartfelt. “Well fuck.”
“You made the right call not standing down your defenses,” Kira told Torvald, not looking away from the feed.
The bog’s hag was a Tsavitee bioweapon whose primary purpose as near as Kira could figure it was to terraform any planet it landed on. Only instead of creating a paradise, it left behind a wasteland that was toxic to most living creatures.
It was considered so invasive that the only solution if a planet was exposed was a complete quarantine.
No one in or out.
Such an event would spell economic doom to any planet unlucky enough to be infested.
Cut off from trade, they would have to survive with only the resources available to them. Not an easy task when technology and goods were often imported from other planets.
