“I’m from the Republic,” Bright said to the woman. “My name is Captain Bright. Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll get you both out of here. What’s your name?”

“Sheree,” she said, her voice weak. “This is Venn. I’m…not sure if he’s…He might be dead. He hasn’t moved in a while.”

“Don’t worry about that now, Sheree. Are the other members of your crew still alive?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We lost contact with one another when…everything caught fire. The station’s comms are down.”

As I expected, Bright thought.

He pulled a comlink from his belt and lifted it to his mouth.

“Innamin. Peeples. I have two survivors. One is too injured to move. I’m going to call the pill droid and get them back to the Longbeam. Have either of you had any luck?”

As he spoke, he tapped a remote clipped to his belt that would summon the rescue droid to his location. Hopefully the machine would be able to do something for the unconscious man—Venn. And if not, the medical bay on the Aurora IX was equipped to handle a number of different emergencies.

Bright’s comlink crackled to life.

“No other survivors yet, Captain,” Innamin said, his voice clouded by static—evidently the damage to the station was causing interference. “But we have another problem.”

“Talk to me,” Bright said, watching the rescue droid glide silently into the room.

He signaled to Sheree that he was going to keep moving, continue his search. She nodded, her expression pained but grateful.

“I started on the lowest level,” Innamin continued. “It’s where they stuck the operational stuff for the station—power, life support, all that. I had a hunch and wanted to check the main reactor. I’m glad I did. It took some serious damage. It’s unstable. If it’s not repaired, it’ll blow for sure.”

Blast it, Bright thought. Not that he’d expected this to be easy, but this was an entirely different level of challenge.

“How long do we have?” he said.

“Honestly, sir, if it were up to me, I’d pull us out right now. It could go at any second.”

“Can you do anything? Stabilize it, even just long enough for us to continue our search? I found two survivors—there are bound to be more.”