Free In the Presence of My Enemies by Stephen A. Fender Page B

steady,” he said in a hushed voice, as if the volume might attract more debris to their location.
       “No worries there.” Trent had both hands on the flight stick, his forehead glistening with sweat.
       Just ahead of the ship, the twisted forward hull of a Unified carrier was slowly crashing into an overturned Kafaran warship. The two were slowly merging into one, each shedding chunks of one another in the process. Shawn did his best to block out the thoughts of what it must have been like for the crews of the two vessels near the end. “Who said anything about being worried?”
       From the right side of the pilot’s seat, a softly buzzing alarm began to sound, causing Shawn to cock his head in its direction.
       “What is it?” Trent asked.
       Shawn had to look at the short-range sensor scan twice before he could respond. “Energy signature nearby.”
       Although Trent kept his eyes squarely ahead of the ship, the furrowed brow and tone betrayed his confusion. “Out here? In all this? Is that possible?”
       Shawn shook his head as he confirmed the readings. “Shouldn’t be. Nothing’s been active out here for a long, long time. Even the fusion drive reserves in these vessels should have gone offline by now.”
       “Survivors?” Trent asked.
       Shawn looked up again to see the carrier and the Kafaran cruiser still slowly integrating into one another. “No. No way.”
       “But we found Lieutenant Garcia on the Icarus .”
       “The Icarus was only missing for a matter of months, and luckily Garcia was able to restore minimal power to some compartments,” Shawn corrected. “These ships have been out here for years, and Sector Command did a pretty thorough job of recovering the survivors from this battle. Besides, all the ships that were still moderately functional were switched offline permanently, so I can’t see any way someone could survive out here that long. Without power, there’s no way to replenish environmental suits. And a standard suit only lasts for hours, not days, and certainly not years.”
       “Then what?”
       Shawn was just as baffled by the sensor readings. “I don’t know.”
       “Do we check it out?”
       It could be someone stranded out here . . . or it could be nothing. If one of those fragments out there hits us, we’ll be dead before we know it. “If it were just you and me out here, I wouldn’t hesitate to investigate.”
       “But now?”
       Shawn chuckled. “We’ve got Unified dignitaries, not to mention a disgruntled Kafaran colonel to deal with . . . and that’s before we add Melissa’s opinion into the mix.”
       “We’re too far away for an instant reply . . . assuming you’re considering asking the Rhea for any advice in the first place.”
       “How long?”
       Trent let out a slow huff as he ran the calculations in his head. “Say two, maybe three, hours to get a call there and back.”
       An unaccepted risk. The flow of debris this close to the center of the conflict is almost chaotic. “I’m not willing to stay in this field that long. Its patterns are unpredictable as it is, and we’ve about maxed out our luck card.”
       “The jump gate is about a mile from our current position. If we can get closer to it, I should be able to patch into its light-link communications transmitter.” 
       Usually, doing so would be highly illegal for any number of reasons. But they were officially a military operation at this point. And it was the only way they would get a near-instantaneous answer from the Rhea . . . assuming they were listening on the correct channel. “On an opposite trajectory to the energy reading, I imagine.”
       “Give the man a cigar,” Trent said with a half-smile. “Which doesn’t make your decision any easier, I imagine.”
       “It’s not my decision to make,” Shawn said as he continued to watch the undulating field outside the ship.
       “Well, you ’d