“The ship crawls, my Captain.”

Eric jumped, jolting as he looked around for the voice that had whispered in his ear. “Who . . . what?”

“Forget me so soon, my Captain?”

The woman’s voice whispered again, sounding amused.

Eric froze, a barely remembered slice of the past surfacing.

“Gaia?” he said softly. “Your name is Gaia?”

“So you remember. I am pleased,” she whispered to him. “You had been missing your thoughts, since the crash. Short-term memory has been disrupted, but you recall my name. I am pleased, my Captain.”

“Where are you?” Eric demanded, eyes turning wildly as he tried to pinpoint her location.

“I am . . . everywhere . . .” she whispered, her voice echoing from every corner before fading as she laughed away into the distance. “Hurry, oh Captain, my Captain. Your ship crawls.”

Eric stood still for a long moment as the last whispered echoes faded, and then he forced himself to move again. He still had a job to do, even though he now had a burning curiosity a thousand times greater than the one he felt of the Priminae and their “Central.”

What the hell are Central and Gaia?

There were more of them on the wreck of the Odyssey now, and less of the Odyssey for them to crawl over. Lyssa was stunned by how fast the alien things were tearing the ship apart, and it was clear that they were not slowing down. No, far from it. They were speeding up at a terrifying rate.

She drew out her radio carefully, keying open a channel.

“Weston, if you can hear me, those things are tearing the place apart. They’ll be on you in minutes at this rate. I don’t care how deep you are. Do whatever it is that you’ve got to do and get the hell out of there.”

She paused for a moment, listening to the static on the channel. Normally her radio was as clear as crystal since it used a digital packet system, but now it was clear that she was transmitting on an older backup channel.

“Weston, come back,” she demanded a short time later. “You’ve got trouble on that tin roof of yours. Come back.”

With nothing but static on the radio for the next long moment, Lyssa growled and tossed her mic aside, letting it clatter to the bottom of the boat.

“Damn it!” she hissed, eyes still warily watching the remains of the NACS Odyssey as she was slowly eaten away in the distance.

Sometimes Eric was truly shocked by the capability of the things on his ship.

The Odyssey had always been designed to move under CM fields in order to help counterbalance the effects of acceleration. In the habitat modules this was reinforced by the spinning centrifuge that provided the crew with a gravity replacement, but below decks any acceleration was a problem due to the microgravity environment.