He had to get the information he needed and then get Krystal safely back to the Zataras. He glanced across at her. Her head was down, watching streams of data on her tablet.
“Still running your tests?”
She looked up and grinned. “It’s working much better than I had hoped. Even sitting here in partial shadow, it’s keeping us hidden.”
The AI’s voice came over the speakers in the cockpit. “Proximity alert. Incoming object.”
T’arq flicked the screen to show the external view of the ship, showing a small, dark object creeping toward them. It was shaped like a disc, flatter than it was wide, and it hovered slowly, though no method of propulsion was visible.
“What is that?” she asked, transfixed by the sinister presence of the dark object. She pushed back in her chair as if she could move further away.
T’arq’s voice was grim. “A Xakul drone.”
“Do they know we’re here?” She watched as the drone drifted closer, the matte black of the exterior making it fade into the darkness of space beyond. If she wasn’t staring right at it, it would be easy to miss.
“I’m not sure. It could just be a coincidence…”
“But you don’t believe in coincidences, do you?” Krystal’s voice was barely above a whisper, as if speaking quietly would prevent the drone from seeing them.
A line of horizontal lights flickered into life, the brightness making T’arq blink and Krystal throw an arm up to shield her eyes.
“No.” T’arq watched the drone move closer, the light of what must be a scanner sliding backwards and forward across the asteroid until it was almost on top of them. T’arq’s heartbeat was so loud he could hear it in his ears.
“What do we do?” Her words were so quiet, he almost missed them.
“We wait. Hopefully, it will pass over us.”
The drone reached them and hovered over the ship. T’arq and Krystal stared, transfixed, as it hovered mere meters away from them, visible through the glass of the cockpit window. The light of the scanner danced over their ship, flickering in the darkened interior. The drone stopped right in front of them as a small hatch on the underside opened and a mechanical arm emerged.
She darted a nervous glance at T’arq. “What is—”
Without warning, the drone fired a small blob of a neon green substance at them, which spread across the glass of the hatch in a web-like pattern.
T’arq had a suspicion he knew exactly what the substance was. “Fuck.”
