Not all of their priors knew weapons or ciphers, or physics-shattering space travel. Not everyone was considered so special. Izairis had a second prior, down below the forger, some type of mop weaver. That was it. A weaver of mops. Oush’s second-deep was a boblet shepherd. Boblets, apparently, were small, roundish, six-legged oinkers, bred in order to guard the perimeters of livestock farms on some distant planet. Naecia had probed for more but Oush maintained there was nothing else there. Just memories of these tiny gruntlings that could gang-devour a would-be predator in the blink of an eye. That was the thing: being a Stringer didn’t mean that everyone who came before was onto some great mystery. Why couldn’t Naecia have been one of those, occupying the same cord as mop weavers or boblet shepherds?

She pushed her lament aside and retrained her focus. Izairis had said something about encryption sentinels. “What about them?” Naecia asked.

Izairis, who had reengaged at the prospect of freedom, gestured derisively to the display on her access pad. “Well, you’d think they would have thought about bottlenecking the network connections at the dock so nobody could hammer down the security protocols and slave the ship to a parasitic shuttle!”

Naecia wasn’t super keen on the lingo but she got the point. “So, no way to get through it?”

“Locked out is locked out, Naecia.”

“Oush? Do you see anything we might repurpose to construct a relativistic jet gun or a geometric laser?”

Oush rolled his eyes. “Those aren’t real things, Naecia.”

“You’re the one with the theoretical weapons architect lurking in there somewhere. Are any of those theories worth a shit?” She was tense. Time was running out.

“You don’t have to raise your voice,” said Izairis, covering her ear nubs with hanks of purple robe.

“No, I actually do. Between us we have access to nine brains and haven’t come up with anything resembling a viable solution.”

Izairis crossed her arms and glared. “Seven brains. I don’t think Oush’s boblet farmer or my basket weaver are destined to contribute much.”

Even with all the brains, there wasn’t a lot they could work with. Silent Child had been tied to the Vortu sortie, which itself was under the control of an approaching cruiser. They needed to either crack the sortie and retake control or find a way to kill the oncoming marauders.

“Anyone got a Vortu downcord?” Naecia grumbled rhetorically.

She rage-scrolled through the ship’s schematics. The sortie had taken near full control of the Silent Child. They needed to figure out a way to defend the defenseless. Getting rid of the sortie was the most obvious solution, except that they couldn’t access the airlock to reach it and the dock’s emergency charges used to remove unwanted or dangerous vessels were, of course, also under lockdown.

Naecia continued through the submenus, swiping back and forth, growling. “Oush!” she called. “What menu was environmental?”

Oush shifted his eyes across his face. It looked like a chore. Naecia wondered why he didn’t just turn his entire head.