Pirra jammed her sensor around the corner and staggered after it as it told her that the path was clear.

Her breathing was ragged, her muscles burned with pain, and she almost lost control of their movement. But she pressed on.

Had they not been in zero-g, she could never have moved Cenz. The large rocky parts of his body probably weighed hundreds of kilograms alone.

The guard had not shot her, and she found herself wishing he had. At least she could have stopped her own bleeding - assuming she'd survived.

But the man had shot Cenz instead.

Her return shot had taken him in the armpit - he'd turned and presented it too much. Why he'd even done it she couldn't know, but he'd spat blood at her as he'd been dying.

"Fucking xenos," he'd said. Tears had been in his eyes.

His death was senseless, pointless, and Cenz might follow soon.

She'd taken him through a series of narrow, winding tunnels, barely large enough for her to fit them both through. It had been exhausting, but with the information she'd gotten from the guard's system, she'd found that it significantly shortened their path back to the ship.

The effort, though, had not just been exhausting, but she was pretty sure she'd strained a few muscles - not to mention the injuries from when he'd crashed into her. All her own fault, she'd been trying to keep him from crashing into a bulkhead, but she'd never had to transport a victim who was made of stone.

"Cenz, you awake?" she asked loudly, hoping to get any response.

Since the guard's bullet had ripped through his side, the Coral had been unresponsive. The water trapped in his inner suit was gone, and she could tell that his body was drying out quickly.

The rough rock had a huge gap in its side, a whole chunk blasted away.

Angry red filaments penetrated out of it, but had quickly curled up back into the rock. Other than that, it only looked like rock; paler inside than out, but that was all.

Was he alive or dead? She didn't know, and the datasets she had on her system didn't tell her any more. Anatomical and medical knowledge about his people was minimal in her system's libraries.

But she wouldn't abandon him, not if she could help it. She thought he was still alive, but in some kind of comatose state.

If he regained consciousness, he might order her to leave without him. And it would be wise, but she did not think there any chance he'd get help in time, then.

"Pirra."

A series of flashes in the corner of her eye were caught by her system.

"Cenz!" she said. He couldn't understand it, but he'd at least hear the sound. His kind weren't deaf, they just didn't use verbal communication.

His polyps were limpy coming out of their holes; when he'd taken the hit they'd all retreated in so deeply to his rocky shell that they were invisble.

His lights flashed again. "You should leave me," he said. Her system translated it in a very neutral voice, but his words came slower than normal, and that worried her.

"I'm not," she said, reaching a new corner and shoving the sensor around. Stopping both of their weight with her legs was hard, but she managed it.

No one down here. She'd tried to pick one of the shortest paths she could, but still keep in some randomness. After those three guards failed to report back in, she expected more squads to get dispatched - their dirty secret had been uncovered.

"I need to get into water," Cenz flashed. "I stayed inside as long as I could, but the air ran out. I don't have that long."

"Don't worry, we're going to make it," she said, dragging him around the corner. "We're not that far."

Without a translation unit he wouldn't understand, but perhaps he'd get the feeling. She just hoped he would try to hold on.

But his polyps looked bad. They could not stay upright and flopped over limply. Was it from weakness, or from being out of water?

There was an opening here, just a hole in the wall half-filled with heavy piping. Peering out, she saw nothing and began to pull Cenz out.

Maybe she should look for a water tap. It surely wouldn't be sufficient, but maybe it'd buy him some more time-

She noticed the shooter just before he fired, and jerked herself back.

His shot would have taken her head off if she'd not seen it and moved.

"Down!" she yelled, shoving Cenz back behind the pipes.

"We've got your other routes cut off," a male human called. "Surrender, now."

She unslung the rifle. She wasn't about to give up - there might still be a way out. Peering down the hall, she couldn't tell if anyone was down there. If they had been, then they'd have them surrounded with no cover at all.

"You are in violation of intergalactic law," she called back. "Summon my parent ship immediately - we have an injured being here."

"You don't get to make demands," the man yelled. "Come out immediately or we'll not be taking you alive."

The last shot had been aimed to kill her, so she didn't figure there was any truth in his offer of clemency.

Sounds came from the hall behind them, and she realized that the talking had just been a distraction - if they came around that corner they'd be without any cover at all.

She slammed the butt of her rifle into a control panel. Every panel like this contained a glass tube that would break in a depressurization event - a simple and foolproof way to make sure pressure seal doors would activate even if most other systems failed.

The door slammed shut quickly, shaking the floor.

It would take them awhile to force the door open or convince the system that there had been no depressurization. At least in this kind of place, she figured it would.

Unfortunately, she realized too late that it triggered the door down the hall as well.

They were trapped.

"Put your weapon down and step out slowly - hands up."

She wouldn't do that. If she was lucky, these men might be recruits, and she could scare them off.

They'd have her in their sights and would be able to gun her down if she peeked. She needed an advantage.

Taking the sensor she'd been using, she set her system to overload every piece in it at once. It was far too much heat for the device to run them all, and there was a component in the sensors she knew from experience would produce quite an uncomfortably bright flash when it overheated.

She chucked it out the gap. Shots came in return, confirming her suspicions. But none of the bullets hit the tiny sensor, and a moment later-

BANG. It burst, and while it wasn't the best cover, she leaned out and squeezed the trigger on her rifle.

A burst of rounds fired out, not hitting them, but hitting close enough to send some ducking. Others, she saw, had recoiled - the bright flash had been worse through their scopes, enough to stun them-

But then she realized just how many there were.

She ducked back just as return fire came, flinching as round after round hit the piping behind her. But the metal was thick, and only fools used rounds that could punch through things on a ship or station.

At least a dozen, she figured. Only about four times as many as she'd first thought.

"Shit," she said.

"Pirra," Cenz flashed.

"Just stay down!" she signalled, waving him down and hoping he'd not try to go out. Not try to do something stupidly brave again.

"Pirra, I just want to say how sorry I am." He was still going.

She tried to wave him down again. This was not the moment for him to be feeling bad for getting injured. She had to figure out something, and quickly.

"I know you threw your singing stone away," he said.

That caught her off-guard. "Wait, what?"

"I'm sorry, I looked up more after we spoke on the ship. I didn't know how bad it was for your people. What it meant for you to have them - how hard it was."

Their translators always did an incredible job of sharing the feeling behind words, reading inflections and tones and context to try and impart the most accurate portrayal of what a being was saying. She didn't know how Cenz's kind even displayed emotion like sadness. In his current state it was hard for him to even talk, and yet he was trying so hard to impart the emotion to his words.

She'd never heard his voice more full of sorrow.

"It's all gone," he continued. "Almost all of your people killed, your language and culture eradicated . . . and you had to throw it away."

Pirra didn't know what to say. She didn't know how she could possibly let herself delve into the emotions that moved him so much now. Even at the best of times they were something she was scared to consider.

But it meant enough to him to bring up when he was, in all likelihood, dying.

Kneeling, she reached out a hand and touched the mechanical hand at the end of his arm.

The fingers closed around her hand gently.

"I'll get us out of this," she told him softly. Her voice cracked all the same.

Now she just had to figure out how-

"Hey, who are you?" she heard a human shout. Someone else was out there.

*******

Six guns pointed to Kell, while another six kept their sights trained on the doorway.

"Identify yourself, immediately!" a man barked. Half a dozen other voices were screaming orders.

Kell ignored them all.

"I am Ambassador Kell from the Sapient Union."

Kell's voice did not sound as it normally did. A slip of something strange, inhuman, came into the tones.

And the men facing the Ambassador caught it. To a man, those present felt fear enter their hearts. Something in them was triggered by what the being before them had just let slip.

Its voice, the kind of voice that it would have used in ages past to cry out as it hunted life like theirs. From the simplest bacteria to humanity itself, Shoggoths had preyed upon them. Instinct existed in all such life to fear their sound.

One man, the oldest, spoke. His voice trembled, but he did a good job of keeping his strength.

"I don't care who you are, get out of here!"

But he made no move to force the issue.

"Am I to take it, then, that you will try to keep me from taking my compatriots out of here?" Kell asked. The voice was simple, quiet. But more of the truth of what it was slipped into its voice.

Part of Kell wanted them to listen.

But they didn't.

"These are my prisoners! Get out of here before I shoot!" the man yelled. He was nearly to the breaking point, his hands shaking. At any moment he'd let off a shot on accident.

Kell smiled.

"Good."