Free The Xenocide Mission by Ben Jeapes

would be soon. A starship would turn up, its translator banks programmed with what SkySpy had gleaned of the XC language, and their captors would be ordered in their own tongue to hand any captives over, or else.
    Whereupon, quite possibly, the XCs would slaughter their captives anyway and then die their own glorious deaths. So, while sitting and waiting was a possibility, escape did seem the preferable option.
    Hence, it was with a sense of detached reality that Joel saw a couple of XCs come in – Boon Round did not jump them as suggested – bearing bundles which they carefully left hanging in mid-air and then backed away from. Those bundles were Joel and Boon Round’s spacesuits.
    ‘Amazing!’ said Oomoing. The cavern was well lit with lights brought in from Barabadar’s ship and the object of interest took up most of the open space. She wasn’t an expert on spacecraft but still there seemed something distinctly
extraterrestrial
about it, even though it was essentially a long tube, flat at the end that faced space, tapered at the inward end. It exactly matched recordings of the other ship, the one that got away.
    The layout of the place confirmed her hypothesis about artificial gravity – there was quite clearly a platform of some kind running the length of the bay and down either side of the ship, with a safety rail to prevent anyone falling off. A rectangular hole showed dark against the craft’s hull three quarters of the way down, and a small ramp led up to it.
    Barabadar, studying the recordings of the attack, had noted that the asteroid’s defences rose out of the rock from beneath hidden hatches. She had ordered a close survey of the asteroid’s surface to see what else might be concealed there, and the entrance to this cavern had been found. From there, the searchers had located the inner entrance and backtracked through the maze of dark, airless passages to the occupied area of the asteroid. This was one of the unpressurized areas and everyone was suited up.
    ‘It’s the answer to my prayers,’ Barabadar said. ‘Loyal Son?’
    Oomoing recognized Stormer’s battle-fit shape in the armoured figure that approached.
    ‘The area is secure, Martial Mother,’ he said. ‘As far as we can tell there are no outlanders on board.’
    ‘You’ve been on board?’ Oomoing interrupted. She caught his sour glance through his visor.
    ‘There’s an airlock and what looks like a simple control panel on the inner hatch, Learned Mother, but I don’t want to start pressing buttons just yet.’
    Oomoing could see his point. The extraterrestrials had been quite thorough about making sure none of their superior technology fell into Kin hands. The lifeboat was probably rigged to blow if any unauthorized entry was attempted.
    ‘So how did you check for outland-extraterrestrials?’ she asked.
    Stormer glanced at Barabadar, as if for permission, then back at Oomoing. ‘We attached listening devices to the hull and we looked through the windows,’ he said. ‘There are lights on inside. I’d surmise it’s under its own power.’
    ‘And the inner hatch would have shut the moment it detected the pressure drop,’ said Barabadar, ‘so the interior is probably pressurized too.’
    ‘So it will have their optimal environmental conditions.’ Oomoing felt an ever-rising excitement. ‘We could learn a great deal about their world if we could get on board.’
    ‘Maybe,’ Barabadar said. ‘But if our two outlanders can operate it – and two Kin could certainly operate a ship of ours this size – then this could be the best way of returning them to their own people.’
    Stormer and Oomoing both looked at her as if she had just renounced the battle gods. Stormer was probably thinking things it would be lethal to say out loud. Oomoing had no such compunction.
    ‘Return them? You’re . . .
returning
them?’ she said, delighted.
    Barabadar ignored them both. ‘Third Son,’ she said.
    ‘My Mother?’ said