"Why do I get the feeling that doesn't mean anything good for any of us in here?" Rachel asked, looking at the display in the holoblock.

  "Is that a rhetorical question, or are you actually asking?" I said, hitting her with a glance.

  Everybody else, including red shift and blue shift, were staring at the display in front of us. The livisk were out there and they were moving around, but I wasn't sure what they were doing.

  Okay, so I had a decent idea of what they were doing. The clanging coming from the door made it obvious enough they were trying to get in here, and they were trying to get in here as quickly as possible.

  "We could just go out in a blaze of glory," Smith said. "You know, like that old rock song?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. Ever since that thing went into the public domain, it’d become a shorthand in entertainment for military people doing something monumentally stupid in the name of trying to look cool.

  "Nobody on this ship is going to go out in a blaze of anything," I said, glancing at the jet of coolant still coming out of the back end of the ship.

  "Okay, nobody but some of the engineers who probably already went out in a blaze of glory, but I don't want anybody else doing anything stupid. We're not sacrificing ourselves needlessly.”

  "Sacrificing ourselves might be the better idea," Sanderson said, her voice quiet.

  I looked over at her. She had a grim set to her face. Like she was thinking about the same thing all of us knew.

  It was never a good thing when the livisk took you captive. It was never a good thing to go to their reclamation mines. It's not like they took captives to a fancy vacation planet or anything like that.

  There was another clang. I could see they’d picked up whatever crowbar-type thing the others lost when I blasted them with Smith's weapon, and they were using it to bang on the blast door again.

  "Do you think they expect me to open up the door like I did last time so they can take us by surprise, or do you think they're just doing that because they know it annoys the shit out of me because I reacted to it the last time around?" I asked.

  "Hard to say for sure," Rachel said. "Why don't you open the door and see what they say?"

  I hit her with an arched eyebrow.

  "She's got jokes."

  "Might as well try to have a sense of humor about something before you get sent off to work in the mines."

  "The CCF yearns for the mines," I muttered with a chuckle.

  "Yeah, well, I don't yearn for the mines," John said, looking at that door. "And I’d appreciate it if you didn't open the door again."

  I looked at the readout for the ship. Every major section was red. Everything except for engineering, oddly enough. I tapped a button on the holoblock and Argyle appeared.

  "Still no visit from the livisk?" I asked.

  "Afraid not, Captain," he said. "It could be that there are elevated radiation levels all throughout the engineering section.”

  My eyes went wide at that. I looked at the readouts to try and figure out what he was talking about. Of course, the ship had taken so much damage over the past half hour that it was entirely possible there was extensive radiation damage to the engineering section but we had no idea about it because the computer wasn't picking up on it.

  "We're not seeing anything like that up here," I said.

  "No, you wouldn't see anything like that up there," he said, grinning with a twinkle in his eye. "The livisk are a little more sensitive to ionizing radiation than we are, and so I figured it might be a good idea to flood some of the compartments between us and them. The instant they headed my way they started picking up that radiation, and apparently they decided not to come any further into my domain. I also made sure to pull everybody back so it would look like we abandoned those sections.”

  He paused and looked down for a moment. He suddenly seemed way more sad than he had any business being when he was coming up with a clever way to keep the livisk from attacking his people.

  "We had to drag some of the bodies into those areas to make it look convincing. People who died in that hit. Makes it look more real."

  I glanced back to the engineering section. It was yellow near the front, which meant the livisk were massing there but not making a move, and there were several dead bodies scattered throughout the No Man’s Land according to the ship.

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  I sighed. "I'm sure they would've died happy knowing they're keeping all of you safe for a little while."

  The implied question hung there. Argyle picked up on it. Good man. The embodiment of somebody being excessively efficient because it helped him to be more lazy.

  "Yeah, well, I don't know how much longer we're going to be safe back here, sir," Argyle said, looking at a display in front of him. "That magnetic de-coupling is only getting worse. The whole ship is wired up like a Christmas tree right now to keep anything running, and that’s the kind of thing that's going to result in this going up like a Christmas tree that caught fire sooner rather than later.”

  "I was afraid you were going to say something like that. Are your escape pods still working?”

  “They are, sir," he said.

  "Fine. I'm ordering you to go ahead and get in them. There's no sense in all of you dying at your post."

  "Dying at our posts might be better than dealing with whatever the livisk want to do with us, sir," he said, frowning as his eyes darted back and forth. No doubt from reading another display in front of him.

  "Let me ask you this. The entire ship has been pacified at this point. I don't think we're getting any reinforcements from the CCF in a timely manner. Is you staying back there realistically going to prolong anything by all that much?"

  "By all that much? No, sir. I'm not exactly a miracle worker."

  "You've worked miracles today, Mr. Argyle," I said, snapping a salute at him. He blinked in surprise, and then he snapped a salute back at me.

  "Very well, sir," he said. "We're going to get out of here while the getting’s good. I would advise you to do the same, but something tells me it's a bit of a dog's breakfast up there with you."

  "Yeah, we're trapped up here like sardines in a can waiting to be peeled," I said. "At least the livisk aren't going to eat us."

  "You might be careful about that, sir. I've heard some of the stories."

  I thought about some of the stories I'd heard as well. Stories of people going insane. Stories of people getting it on with a livisk in the middle of a battlefield.

  I thought about how a lot of those stories had turned out to be a whole hell of a lot more true than I wanted them to be.

  "Best of luck, Mr. Argyle. With any luck, we'll see each other back at Central Station."

  He snorted. "At this point I'd be happy to see each other in the Reclamation Mines right before we take some of their guns from them and shove it up their sparkly blue asses, sir."

  "I look forward to that day, Mr. Argyle."

  The communication cut off, leaving the display showing the ship that was bright red all over to indicate everybody on the ship had either been pacified or killed.

  It was so much worse than the last time around. So much worse than anything that came in the nightmares that hit me at night.

  I glanced to the window that showed the Varis standing out there. She paced back and forth. I tried to ignore the way her lithe body moved with all the grace and volatility of a caged jungle cat trying to figure out a way to get at the crunchy prey on the other side of a window at the zoo.

  I knew it would only be a matter of time before they figured out a way to get through that blast door. The only question was whether or not they’d be able to get through the blast door before the reactor went critical and anybody on this ship would be pining for the fjords.

  Though it wasn't even realistic to think that we’d be pining for the fjords. No, we’d be so much interstellar dust orbiting the sun at an extreme distance. We wouldn't even be picked up by potential future Titans, hypothetical intelligent life from the moon and not the ancient things that fought the Greek gods, who came out here looking for signs of intelligent life that might've existed in the solar system once upon a time.

  I stood and looked around at everybody. I seemed to be doing that a lot, but I wanted to take the measure of my crew. I got the feeling all of them knew what was happening, and that this wasn't going to go well for us.

  "All of you have done an excellent job here today. Even better than I expected, if I'm being perfectly honest," I said, holding each of their eyes for a moment.

  I idly wondered what happened with Olsen. He was out there somewhere still. Presumably he'd been caught by the livisk. I wondered if he was one of those yellow dots that indicated somebody who'd been stunned, or if he was one of the red dots that indicated somebody who'd paid the ultimate sacrifice for the CCF.

  The small payment for dying in the line of duty would be nothing to his family. I wondered if his father would even stop for a moment to grieve losing one of the lesser scions of his family.

  He had a lot of brothers and sisters. Apparently dear old dad was just as enthusiastic about knocking up various women as he was at running everything he touched into the ground.

  Not that I could say that kind of thing out loud. Not when he was the CEO of the CCF.

  "Okay, everybody," I said, leaning against the holotable and bathing in the light of the hologram all around me. I closed my eyes so I didn't have to look at what was going on in the holoblock.

  She was there, of course, and her presence was stronger than usual. Oddly enough, it wasn't like I could feel her thoughts or anything like that. It was more like I just had a strong sense she was there on the other side of that bulkhead. Pacing. Nervous, no doubt. Thinking about the damaged engine and how there was a good chance the ship was going to blow before she got in here to get at the ultimate prize,

  Even if I was being a little egotistical fancying myself as the ultimate prize,

  "I think it's time to consider surrender," I said,

  "Excuse me, sir?” John said.

  "John, calm down," Rachel said,

  I opened my eyes. The livisk was gone, but of course she wasn't gone. She was right there in front of me in the holoblock, pacing back and forth. Another livisk came up to her. She exchanged words with that one for a moment, and then the livisk pulled something out and started working on the door.

  I frowned as I stared at what he was doing. Meanwhile, everybody else on the bridge crew was arguing behind me.

  "He must be giving into whatever strange psychic link they have going. He would never suggest surrender otherwise," John said,

  “That's not what's happening, John," Rachel said. "Surrender might be our best option.”

  "And spend life in the reclamation mines? Is that your idea of a life?"

  "It's a life, John," Rachel said,

  But I'd tuned out their argument. The livisk placed something against the bulkhead door. Something that was blinking. I could just see it from the display,

  Varis stared down at that spot, and her eyes went wide. She cuffed the livisk at the door across the back of the head and their head jerked to the side. Then she was shouting something and the livisk were all running. All but the one she'd cuffed. That one was still down on the ground twitching.

  A chill ran through me. And I suddenly got an emotion from that link. Terror.

  I looked to the bulkhead door. "Shit. Everybody get down!”

  The world erupted around me.