The captain had been placed in a flight chair on the lower deck, a crewmember set to monitoring his condition. Sirius and Big Man floated in the small executive workspace which now conspicuously lacked the First Mate.

“You probably already guessed, but that ship you spotted wasn’t friendly at all. We lost four boats before we could put that egomaniac First Mate down and broadcast surrender. I suspect they’re bringing us in now, they weren’t very talkative on the radio, but it beats being space dust. Now, I don’t know what they want, but I’d bet you’ll be wishing you went out the airlock a lot sooner”, Big Man explained almost breathlessly, he was still hyped up on adrenaline. “By the way, I’m Dima”, he offered his hand.

“Sirius”, the two shook hands and Sirius grit his teeth, his hand was still very painful, “Let me guess, First Mate bought you, just like the captain bought me, huh?”

“Unfortunate that we landed on separate sides, but it’s all business, you know? I didn’t know you were one of us from the Program. No hard feelings?”

“No hard feelings”, Sirius shrugged, “We both did what we needed to do to get by. Is what it is. So, what are we going to do now?”

“Well, we have no First Mate, and the captain is kind of useless right now, and I really don’t want the job of being responsible for this shit-show. Job can be yours for all I care”, Dima shrugged.

“What’s the conditions of the crew on the other boats?” Sirius asked. It seemed like a captain-ly question to be asking.

“They’re all banged up, like us – possibly worse. It’s too bad we don’t have any good doctors with us, some of our guys could really use one. You look like you need one too”, Dima said.

Sirius cracked a bloody smile and fished out the bag of painkillers from his flightsuit pocket.

“I have just the thing. I think these’ll do the trick for now. Want one?” He offered to Dima who eagerly accepted a few. As they took them, Sirius started working out what they needed to do. “So, we’ve heard nothing from these guys that just shot at and killed almost half of us?”

“Nope”, Dima shrugged, “Even when we offered our surrender, we got nothing back outside of some weird static. If they’re broadcasting, it’s either encrypted beyond our decrypt abilities or we don’t have access to that channel”.

Sirius turned to one of the workstations and glanced at what the monitor was displaying. In the ship diagnostics window a multitude of concerning red lights blinked with urgency over a schematic of their ship. That they were still holding pressure was a miracle.

“Were we able to get any sort of ID on the shooters?” Sirius asked.

“Not yet, we got interrupted”, Dima joined him at another workstation and started the ID program again. “It’s not a commercial ship, that’s for sure, not like they’d have that kind of firepower anyways”.

“Well, it’s not one of the other factions either, they wouldn’t be this quiet about capturing one, much less two, of ours so quickly. Half the system would know by now”, Sirius mused.

“What about police?”, Dima asked.

“No fucking way, we’d be dead already then. They already blew half of us up, easier to do the paperwork on all of us at once and leave no one left alive to say they shot down a bunch of defenseless emergency pods”.

“Maybe it’s some sort of military ops that we stumbled onto. Seems about right, the radar profile is tiny compared to what they threw at us”, Dima’s expression fell, “Which means they’re about to make all of us disappear”.

Sirius went quiet, he wondered how much worse it could get and hoped that right now would be the low point of the day. Still, he needed to do something, at least to feel like they had some sort of control.

“Then, let’s show them that we don’t disappear easy”, Sirius said, trying to keep his voice from shaking, “Look, they’ll probably bring the boats in, breach the airlock doors, drag us all out by our ears, and that will be it”, Sirius tapped out a search query on the keyboard, “But…I have an idea”.

“What is it?” Dima asked and floated to see the screen better.

“The Anna backed up all flight data to the lifeboats. Of course, they only have space for 36 hours of raw data recording but that’s more than plenty for what happened today”, Sirius explained as he navigated the file explorer on the terminal.

“We can try, but I doubt they’ll let us broadcast anything”, Dima said as he flicked through the workstation’s screens. “look, there it is – they’re jamming us – we can’t even get the ping time to the nearest station – Welles’ Mining. It hasn’t updated since about when all this shit started”.

“Then, we’ll cut out the memory unit, and hide it” Sirius explained as he went over to a tool closet embedded in the wall and took out two laser cutters, sending one floating over to Dima.

“Hide it? How?” Dima asked as he caught the cutter and tested to see if it would light. It fizzled, and Dima gave it a few hard whacks with his palm. He tested it again and it finally lit.

“You’re right, the memory unit’s not exactly something you can hide in a pocket, or in a lifeboat where it won’t be found quickly. But we have the perfect hiding spot all around us. We’re in a debris field, what’s another piece of trash among the millions?”

Dima nodded and smiled for the first time as he caught on, “so we cut it out and throw it out the door before we’re picked up, a classic. We’ll need to coat it in radiation shielding to protect the data on it. But how do we make sure it gets found?”

“We don’t”, Sirius said.

“Okay, I’ve lost you now”, Dima said, “How does that help us? We might as well not go through the trouble”.

“If they’re military”, Sirius started to explain, “they’re gonna want to cover their tracks. Keep the public from knowing what’s going on. ‘Some point, they’ll find out that one of the memory units is gone, and the only way to make sure they can’t beat its location out of us is to make sure we don’t know where it is either. We just have to hope somebody stumbles across it, or if either of us makes it out alive we come back and find it ourselves. If we know the starting point and its general trajectory and speed, it makes it easier to simulate where it’s at”.

Dima looked unconvinced, then threw his hands up. He was conceding.

“It’s not like we have better options, I’ll get a couple boys up here to help cut out the unit and get a few cans of radiation shielding spray. Meanwhile, you should maybe add a quick explanation to go with the data, that way if it’s found they’ll know what it is and what to do with it”. Dima floated back to the ladder and disappeared.

Sirius turned back to his workstation and selected a video recording program. He knew he looked like shit, but it still surprised him to see his own face staring back at him. His face was thinner than he remembered it being, full of bruises, and extreme exhaustion. He missed his tiny bunk on the Anna more than anything. Still, he began to describe what happened over the last – day? Day and a half? He then sent it and an outline of their plans to the remaining lifeboats. Only two pinged back with agreement. The rest could do what they wanted.