“Two bits!” She yelled, singing the last part.
He had no idea what that meant, but she was laughing with obvious delight and joy. It must be a human thing, and the important thing was that his crew inside had responded. That meant that, at least, there was someone alive in there.
“Alright. Let’s get back to the evac pod. We’ll tie it to the back and haul it away.”
“Wait,” Haven stopped him before he could turn away. “Where’s the upper bridge?”
The upper bridge? Oh, right.
It was easier to find the remnants of the upper bridge. It wasn’t as small as the shelter room, though it was shattered into more pieces. However, it had been thrown further from the bulk of the debris field, so it wasn’t as concealed as the rest of it. In their search for it, they managed to find Spot, Garnet’s cleaning robot, and, for some reason, Vytln found himself hauling the stupid thing with him back to their evac pod before they continued searching.
He had no connection to the simple, busted robot, but his captain’s mate considered the thing practically a pet. It felt right, therefore, to push it into the evac pod before they continued on their way to the broken remains of the upper bridge.
There was a lot of broken glass here, but it wasn’t much of a threat as it just moved out of their way as they pushed through. All the consoles were dark and broken into pieces. Dented, warped, and outright ripped in shreds. It wasn’t possible to determine which consoles were the functional ones and which were the non-functional ones that were behind the hatch.
However, since they were all so broken and warped, it was easy to pull them apart.
Haven was the one who found Alred’s core. She pulled the top of one of the dark consoles away then let out a cry of victory. Vytln turned from the console he was breaking open and floated over to her.
He’d only seen Alred’s core once. Way back on Rik-Vane, when Tanin had taken the core from the space station into the Humility, their new spaceship that they’d bought secondhand. At that moment of transfer, Alred was at his most vulnerable. His core could be put into nearly any machine with a proper port for it, and he’d have all the power of that machine.However, that core itself was not capable of anything except maintaining Alred’s code. Unattached, it was completely inert, totally helpless, and completely isolated from the world.
The gray metal was egg shaped; the slightly tapered top had a panel that could be pushed down to plug into the ship. It was still plugged in, though there was no ship anymore. As Haven grabbed the egg and pulled it out, the broken wires fell away, and the top of the egg closed again.
“Is it okay?” Haven asked, frowning as she ran her finger across the small screen at the front of the egg. But the screen remained dark.
It had still moved though. It closed back up when the wires fell away. It could have just been an automatic movement, one that would occur without power, but it moved meaning that the mechanism was still intact. He knocked against the side. The core felt hollow against his fist, but unlike when Haven knocked, he didn’t hear or feel anything knock back.
“I don’t know,” he finally said.
Haven’s face fell, but she clutched the egg to her chest. It was big, larger than his head, so it was an armful for her. She cradled it like a youngling, however, as she nodded to him.
“Okay. Let’s getting it back to the evac pod. We’ll getting the others and… figure out where we’re going to going once we have them.”
Vytln nodded once and took hold of her hand. He pulled her along as they flew back towards the evac pod. He searched inside for a place to plug in Alred’s core. It would be very helpful to have him inside the small starship. However, the wire type thatthey needed simply wasn’t there, and the old one was shattered pieces. They couldn’t plug him in anywhere.
So, they instead stored his core on one of the seats. Once Haven had him safely strapped in, they went back to the supply storage so he could get towing cords, hooks, and nylon ropes that were very thin but also very strong.
Out here in space, it didn’t need to be super tough to pull the shelter. They were weightless, after all. He could probably push the shelter by hand for a short while. It depended on how much force his boots could output.
No, what he was thinking about was where they were going to be taking the shelter. And after checking the navigation data Haven had taken, he was pretty sure it was going to be have to be planetary re-entry.
It was going to be a rough day for all of them. He needed strong rope.
Chapter 52
Haven
It was impossible to know how long it had been since Haven last slept. She knew it had to be longer than a full day. She had a short, fitful sleep back on the Humility when they’d been swinging here through subspace. But worry for Vytln and her own life meant it hadn’t been a good sleep. And she had no idea how many marks it had been since then.
She only knew that she felt a strange combination of awake and exhausted. She knew it was long past time for her to eat and sleep, but she also had a rush of adrenaline that was powering her to keep going. The combination of fatigue and chemical alertness left her feeling strange, almost floating in her own head.
There was also a general sense of muscle fatigue weighing her down as well. Crawling through Kldyn’s ship had been a lot of physical work. But wrapping the shelter room in ropes and tying it to the evac pod had also, surprisingly, been a lot of work. She might be weightless in space, but it was like swimming. Her muscles were still doing a lot to move and adjust her around.
But the fatigue, the exhaustion, the gripping but distant sense of thirst and hunger were easy to shove in the back of her mind as she strapped herself into the evac pod. Vytln, who had to be just as tired as her – if not more – and injured on top of that, was in the pilot seat now. He had the navigation information she had stolen and was using it to move them around.
The shelter room now towed behind them like a hillbilly trailer strapped to a truck, they flew out of the debris field. Spot was stored safely in the back. Alred was strapped beside her in a seat. She put a hand on him to make sure he stayed still and safe.
And they were heading towards a nearby planet.
