“Let’s get in there,” he said, watching his control panel light up green as the diagnostics told him the docking seal was good. He looked up and saw his team—Petty Officer Innamin and Ensign Peeples, both of whom had suited up in emergency rescue gear pulled from the Longbeam’s lockers.

“This station had a crew complement of seven,” Bright said. “It’s not that big, but there are still plenty of places to hide. They aren’t responding to our comms, which means either they’re injured or the array’s systems were damaged when the projectile hit. We’ll have to do a sweep. We’ll split up, each of us taking a third of the decks. If you find someone, bring them back to the air lock. If you need help, call for the droid.”

He nodded toward the floating silver cylinder hovering just outside the cockpit, vertically oriented and rounded on top and bottom. A pill droid. Very simple design, with one large, round crystal eye and a speaker grille below. It didn’t seem particularly functional, but that was deceptive. Bright had seen these things work. The droid had a variety of extender arms hidden behind sleek panels on its body, and could use them for everything from moving wreckage off trapped victims to performing basic on-site surgery. Handy machine to have around.

“Let’s go,” Bright said, and pressed the release that opened the Aurora IX’s air lock.

A wash of furnacelike air flooded out from the damaged station, bringing with it odors of chemically tinged smoke, melted plastoid, and overheated metal.

“It’s burning,” Ensign Peeples said, his proboscis vibrating almost as intensely as the station itself. “It stinks. Maybe the solar array had too much pharphar for lunch.”

“Yeah, well, I’m getting it, too—my tentacles are almost as sensitive as your nose, Peeples. Just put on your mask and take shallow breaths. We have a job to do.”

The three operatives spread out through the station. The smoke thickened, and despite the tech-enhanced goggles they all wore, it rapidly became obvious that a visual search would be ineffective. The searchers called out as they moved along the decks, paused to listen for responses, then kept going.

Bright was becoming increasingly sure that everyone on the station was dead when he heard a weak voice call out from behind a collapsed control console.

“Please, I’m here…please…”

He moved toward the sound and saw a dark-skinned human sitting with her back against a bulkhead. Blood ran down the side of her face from a wound on her scalp. Another crewmember lay beside her, unconscious. She had taken his head in her lap but didn’t seem to be able to offer anything else by way of assistance to the man.