Ugh, emotions.

I checked the space, scanning the restroom and shower compartment, the morgue, and the other enclosed areas to make sure there weren’t targetDrones, Targets, or any other as yet unknown hostile lurking. The humans stood in the middle of the room, watching me anxiously.

I finished my sweep, told them, “Stay here.” I left one drone to keep my feed relay with Amena active and walked out, shutting the hatch behind me.

I sent my drone cloud ahead and sprinted after it, heading toward the hatch at the opposite end of the module. If the Targets had figured out what I was doing, this was the closest hatch to the control area foyer where they were still gathered.

As I reached the hatch I needed to seal, I risked a look down the short module passage into the next section. My organic nerve tissue detected movement and I hit the hatch release to shut it. I sealed the manual controls, left a drone sentry, and took off for the last hatch.

Inside the medical suite, the humans were still huddled together. Eletra whispered, “Can you tell what it’s doing?”

Amena said, “It’s sealing the hatches, like it said it would.”

Ras looked frustrated and impatient, but didn’t argue.

The third hatch led to a connecting section which was a secondary pathway into the engineering module. This hatch was already closed and sealed, but I fused the manual control anyway. I’d lost all but four drone scouts in the rest of the ship: one (Scout One) was still locked in the control meeting area with the two dead Targets. Scout Two was in the foyer ceiling watching the Targets gathered at the sealed hatch, and Three and Four had tucked themselves up under supporting rib structures in nearby corridors.

I started back toward Medical, letting my surviving drone cloud spread out a little more. Bits of me hurt enough that I needed to tune down my pain sensors.

At the Medical corridor, I split my drones into two squads and positioned them at opposite ends of the access. I needed to clear this section and make sure I hadn’t trapped us in here with anything, but there were things I needed/wanted to know first.

When I stepped inside, Ras said, “What’s going on?” He glanced at Amena, still unsure who to talk to. “Are we safe here?”

I knew ART’s normal crew size; the command crew alone was at least eight members, with a rotating complement of instructors and students. I knew from my brief sweep that there was no sign anyone had been treated in the medical suite recently, no dead humans in cold storage. Which was good, except that the bodies could have been spaced. I knew how ART would have felt about that.

I said, “Where’s the crew of this ship?”

Again, Ras looked at Amena. Amena’s brow furrowed and she said to me, “I thought they were the crew.”

“No,” Eletra said. She seemed confused, too. “Our ship was a Barish-Estranza transport.”