“Oh no,” Lana said. “That’s the alarm. I set the sensors for a continuance scan for approaching enemies. It must have picked up something.”

They hurried to the bridge and Lana brought up several consoles to hover in front of her.

She wrinkled her forehead. “It’s not a Warped. It’s something else …” She moved her fingers rapidly across the controls. The main viewscreen changed to show a topographic map of the area, where a single blue dot was blinking repeatedly.

The Expert frowned. “That's a spaceship. I think.”

“Shit, it must be the Inthidlon scout we met at the station,” Bulco said. “He’s right on top of my base.”

Nori frowned. “What would he be doing there?”

“Hell if I know, but it can’t be good. He’s level nine, remember? My men are no match for him, we have to get there asap.”

“Hold on, we don’t know for sure that he came looking for a fight. He could just be looking around for his missing people,” Lana said.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Nori said. “Bulco’s right, we have to go see what he’s up to.”

She moved to the center of the bridge, calling for the Navigator seat. Lana and Bulco followed suit, accessing their own terminals.

Unity gently lifted off the dead Broodmother, her six legs bloody as they withdrew from the motionless corpse, then they folded in on themselves, disappearing into the hull. Finally, the ship’s elongated head slowly drew in on its long neck.

Alter Mode disengaged

Then she turned around and shot forward, speeding toward the small blue dot.

21 - Mortal Contact

“Faster!” Bulco said with gritted teeth. “We have to go faster!”

“I’m flying as fast as I can,” Nori replied from her seat, the holographic controls enveloping her fingers. “We’ll be there in less than seven minutes.”

“Damn,” the Engineer huffed. “Okay, might as well use the time to level up.”

He brought up his status screen and gaped at it.

“What’s wrong?” Lana asked, noticing his expression.

“I leveled up twice, but I have six ability points to allocate, instead of four.”

“Hmmm,” Lana frowned and accessed her own status. “And, I got two points from leveling up once, just like last time.”

“I got just four points from two level ups,” Nori said distractedly, still flying the ship. “It looks like after the fifth level we get two points every level instead of one. Bulco’s trait gives him one more point every level, which explains why he has six overall.”

“So you think the number of points we get when we level up increases every five levels?” Lana asked.

“It makes sense. Everything we saw so far indicated five levels represent a significant change: we get new Path options, more attribute points … I think even Alzigo mentioned something along those lines.”