“And here I was hoping that for once something would go right on this ship,” Polk muttered as he glanced at the captain. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Denys sighed and followed the helmsman’s gaze.

Casillo’s breathing was more stable, but he was still pale as a fish (even more than usual) and hadn’t regained consciousness. Polk didn’t feel much better than the captain looked; the adrenaline had worn off about an hour ago, leaving him feeling like a jellyfish. Floating along, neither understanding the world around them nor caring, content and a bit grateful just to be alive.

“No better up at the conn then?” Denys asked, raising a scaly eyebrow at him. Polk rubbed his eyes as he shook his head.

“Not by a long shot,” he replied. “There’s about a dozen spheres up here now, all pinging away at us like dogs after a fox. I had to get us out of the planet’s orbit so we wouldn’t run into them. One of the three reasons I came down here, actually.”

“I know the first one,” Denys called over his shoulder as he walked to the medicine cabinet. After placing his thumb on the security pad, he opened it and withdrew a fluorescent orange pill bottle. He uncapped it, then swallowed two hot pink pills.

“Short-term energy boost,” Denys explained, putting the bottle back into the cabinet and locking it. “Helpful in small doses if you need to stay awake for long periods. I’m assuming the second and third reasons are possible strategies?”

“We need to go back,” Polk said, sighing through his nose. “If only to determine whether Asadi is alive. I just don’t see how we can get close.”

“Any idea what they are?” Denys asked, his head tilting to one side. Polk gave a small nod, not sure why it was relevant. However, the doctor’s expression remained implacable.

“They’re targeting sensors,” Polk replied without hesitating. “They get shot up, sniff around, then get the target’s course and position for missile launchers, probably located at the same spots. Logic says that they’re coming from the planet but we can’t confirm it.”

“Well,” Denys began. “Then you’ll have to find a way to fool them.”

The silence between them stretched until it almost became awkward. Then, Denys straightened up and combed his mohawk of feathers to one side.

“At any rate,” he continued, his tone brisk. “I have, as you say, a ‘hare-brained’ scheme to repair the captain’s respiratory system. With enough power and a little luck, I can re-engineer some human stem cells so they’ll work for lungs instead of blood. I will need a bone marrow transplant, which shouldn’t be too difficult once I find a suitable match. There are a few problems though.”

“Of course,” Polk said in a conversational tone. He’d take ‘a few problems’ over his own lack of a plan any day of the week.

“It will take a lot of cells, since we don’t have the time to grow up a culture,” Denys began, counting off his fingers. “As a result, I would need two or three matches so I wouldn’t put anyone else’s health in jeopardy. Second, adult stem cells don’t normally morph into respiratory ones. That means genetic engineering, which is tricky even at the best of times. I’ll let you know when I can figure out a solution. Lastly, this is a short term fix.”

“Doesn’t sound very short term to me,” Polk pointed out. He received a baleful look from the saurian medic in response. The Sarvolyan’s coal black eyes didn’t bother him as much as it did others, but the cmo could still stare down the helmsman anytime. Polk glanced away.

“The cells have a good chance of not taking,” Denys said. “in which case he will have even more detritus clogging his weakened lungs. Believe me, this was not my first option.”

“At any rate,” Polk replied, holding up his hands in surrender. “You’re further along than I am. Well, good luck, and let me know what you need.”

Denys gave a slight nod, before turning back to the captain.

Sighing and rubbing his eyes, Polk walked off, heading for the mess hall. After a minute, he arrived in a miniaturized carbon-copy of any highschool cafeteria in the galaxy. Even on a starship, people tended to organize themselves into cliques; science sat away from security and enlisted men avoided their officers. Grabbing a shiny foil packet of rations and a cup of coffee, Polk sat down by himself. He cradled the coffee in his hands for a bit, a thousand different scenarios flying through his head.

A traitorous voice in the back of his mind suggested retreat. It was a clever voice; it pointed out that they were facing an opponent with an unknown and so far unbeatable arsenal, combined with crew fatalities that, while light, discouraged another attempt at contact. His commanding officer was incapacitated and needed treatment at somewhere a lot more advanced than the ship’s stone-aged medical bay, while the second-in-command was missing in action. Besides, it was pretty clear by now that whatever was hiding out on the planet didn’t want to be contacted.

And yet… Polk couldn’t help but feel a little burst of shame whenever he considered the idea. His gut, responding to the traitorous voice in his head, told him that it was his duty to continue, that he shouldn’t retreat just because things hadn’t gone as planned. He knew there was some misunderstanding going on between them and the inhabitants of the planet, some unknown history or ideology that generated a hostile response to foreign visitors. He just needed to break through to them. But how?

An idea broke through the surface, gasping for air and flailing as Polk tried to sort through it. He abruptly stood up and left the mess hall with his coffee, leaving the rations uneaten on the table. A minute later he was on the bridge, speedwalking to the sensor station. He grabbed the duty officer’s shoulder.

“Do me a favor and pull up the sensor logs for the sphere,” he said, rubbing his eyes with one hand and holding his coffee in the other. “We need to figure out how to speak their language,” he added when he noticed the duty officer’s raised eyebrows. “Once we do, we can figure out where they’re shooting at us from and why.”

Asadi would’ve immediately understood the meaning of Polk’s scatterbrained thoughts and gotten to work. As it was, Polk had to set his coffee down, get the comm officer over, and explain to both of them what he wanted. But they were skilled, and grasped the gist of what he was asking of them. Minutes later they were poring over sensor and communications logs, trying to find something they could use.

“No, no, nope, nothing,” the sensor officer murmured to himself, running a hand through his straw-colored hair. He glanced over his shoulder at Polk, who’d switched to breathing down the helmsman’s neck. Snorting with amusement, he turned back to the logs.

“Wait a minute,” he said as a new blip came up on his console.

“What?” Polk asked, reappearing by their side like a poltergeist. After recovering his breath, the sensor oficer gestured to the console.

“Looks like wreckage sir,” he replied. “Metal shards, possibly titanium, some leftover radiation from what could’ve been a reactor.”

“Get me a picture,” Polk said, turning around to look at the viewscreen. The image changed from a rough map of their position to the black blanket of space, dotted with white pinpoints. Then the lighting changed.

The shards of metal were bone-white, drifting around each other as if unwilling to part. Something about the color tickled an old memory in Polk, but he couldn’t quite pin down what it was. Fresh starlight drew Polk’s attention to another part of the wreckage, a black nose cone reminiscent of the space shuttle of old.

“D’you think it’s one of ours?” the sensor officer asked. Instead of responding, Polk paced to the captain’s chair. Without sitting down in the uncomfortable steel deathtrap, he keyed in a few commands on the chair’s armrest. In response, the viewscreen magnified on the nose cone. Spotting the familiar blue emblem, Polk pressed his lips into what was either a smile or a grimace. He couldn’t decide which expression it was, but he knew what the insignia stood for, with its sky blue lines and continents lurking on the wreckage like a spider.

“It was,” he answered.