The solar array was now visible in the viewscreen—a large, spindly structure, like one of the feather corals back in Bright’s homesea. Hundreds of long arms arranged in a spiral spinning out from a central sphere in which the crew lived and worked. Each of those arms fitted with collection eyes along its length, blinking and rotating slowly as they drank in the light of the three suns that gave Hetzal Prime and its satellite worlds their uniquely long growing seasons. The array fed the sunlight back to the cropworlds, storing and beaming it down through proprietary technology that was the pride of the system.

The array was beautiful. Bright had never seen anything quite like it. It looked grown—and maybe it was. Supposedly every crop in the galaxy could grow somewhere on the worlds of Hetzal. Perhaps that extended to space stations.

Then, a bright streak, too fast to process even with eyes as capable as Bright’s large, dark orbs, designed by evolution to pick out details in the lightless depths of the seas of Glee Anselm. In an instant the solar array was destroyed. One moment it was intact, performing its function. The next, it was ablaze, half the collection arms shattered, drifting slowly away into space.

The central sphere remained, though flames washed across its outer hull, the muted dance of fire in zero gravity. As Bright watched, the array’s exterior lighting blinked, flickered, and went out.

Bright put a hand to his forehead. He blinked, too. Once, slowly.

Then he turned to his crew.

“We don’t know for sure that the people aboard that station are dead,” he said, looking at his crew’s solemn faces.

“I would like to try to attempt a rescue, but that”—here he pointed out the viewscreen at the wrecked, burning array, getting larger as the Aurora IX approached—“could collapse at any moment. Or explode. Or implode. I don’t know. The point is, if we’re docked when it goes, we’re dead, too.”

Bright tapped one of his tentacles with a fingertip.

“I’m Nautolan, a fact of which I’m sure you’re both aware. Green skin, big black eyes, what else would I be? What you might not know is that these tentacles of mine let me pick up pheromones from other beings, which I translate into an understanding of their emotional states. That’s how I know you two…are terrified.”

Peeples opened his mouth, then, somehow, miraculously, thought better of making a joke and closed it again.

“I get that you’re scared,” Bright went on, “but we have a duty. I know it, and you both know it, too. We need to do this.”

Innamin and Peeples looked at each other, then back at their captain.

“We’re all the Republic, right?” Innamin said.

Bright nodded. He smiled, showing his teeth.

“Indeed we are, Petty Officer.”

He pointed at Peeples.

“Ensign, take us in.”

Chapter Seven