Chapter Five
Come in, Calla

After checking on Cap and Tommy again, Aran tried to pull up communications again. There was nothing. The whole system had been screwed up, reset or something, and it took him hours to make any progress making it work. He ended up rebuilding half the programming structure, jerry-rigged a couple short-cuts that bypassed disrupted functions, and repaired some of the hardware that had been damaged. It was all detailed, painstaking work that required a sharp mind and a steady hand, so it took Aran much longer than he felt it should, since he had neither. Several times, he got so frustrated and angry that he had to stop, turn away from what he was doing, so he didn’t throw a tool, or smash a panel. Then he’d check on Cap and Tommy, take care of whatever they needed, or fuss with how he had the supplies stored, or clean up the mess in the bridge as best he could, filtering the debris out of the air, scrubbing away the stains Shaw had left. He changed fluids again on both Cap and Thompson, taking inventory of how much they had left. With both Cap and Thompson on fluids, and no signs of consciousness yet from either of them, they’d run out of fluids soon. Maybe not today, but tomorrow, maybe, at the rate he had them at. He backed off their rate a little, hoping it was still enough.

His priority was trying to get communications working well enough to reach Calla Station. He also wanted to get the other ship’s functions up and running. The Martelle was blind, crippled. He had no idea where the ship was, how fast it was moving, whether it was in danger of another collision. He tried not to think about it, but the uncertainty ate at him. He also wanted to see if he could figure out how everyone in the stern was; he felt if he could just get some of the ship’s sensors and communication channels open, then he’d be able to find out how everyone was doing back there, maybe let them know he was trying to reach Calla. Maybe if he could get communications up, he’d find out everyone else had managed to eject in the stern life pods, and everyone else was okay. Cut off from contact with him, but okay. Maybe they’d been able to contact Calla. Maybe the people at Calla were already on their way to rescue them all.

“Or maybe you’re still delirious, idiot,” murmured Aran. He replaced the panel he had removed from the command center, and tried to pull up commmunications again. To his relief, it started to look like it was trying to work. He fussed with it, and then tried to contact Calla Station.

“Calla Station, Calla Station. This is the Martelle, come in Calla. Emergency. Come in Calla.”

Nothing.

He adjusted his settings, determined that maybe he wasn’t receiving properly, and tried again. “Calla Station, Calla Station, this is the Martelle, do you read me? Come in Calla, not receiving you.”

Silence.

He replaced the voice/ear pips he had. Still nothing. He tried everything he could think of, and none of it seemed to make any difference. He gave up, frustrated, and tried to establish communications with the crew in the stern of the Martelle. Since the crew from the stern, and the entire stern itself, were gone, he got no answer, but since he had no sensor readings to tell him this, he assumed it was there.

Some part of Aran knew that much of the rest of the ship may be badly damaged. That everyone might be dead. That he might be the last chance they had at getting out of this, and that without communications, he had slim to no chance of getting anyone from Calla out to help them. That maybe the indicator that told him the Martelle was broadcasting an emergency beacon was lying, and the beacon was broken like so many things were. If they couldn’t let Calla know they were alive, then Calla would assume the ship was destroyed. And help wouldn’t come; help would never come. But when those thoughts came, he pushed them away, buried them. Sealed them off. He couldn’t think of those things. He was going to reach Calla; he had to.

He tried again. And again. He spent an hour trying to raise Calla Station, and was met with relentless, infuriating, hope-crushing silence. Tears don’t fall in space, not in weightlessness. Aran sat at the comm, head in hands, wiped his eyes, rubbed his temples. Maybe it was time for some more pain meds. Maybe it was time to start thinking that maybe he was going to die here, stuck in a crippled, mute ship until supplies ran out. He wouldn’t starve, though, he’d dehydrate first. How long could he last? Using the pods water reclamation system, maybe a month? Could he take a month in here? He was certain that if Calla didn’t pick them up soon, Cap and Tommy were going to die. Maybe they would anyway. What would a month be like in here, watching them die, stuffing them in the pod with Wu and Shaw, waiting for his turn?

Aran cursed quietly and tried to give himself another dose of pain medication. His catheter had blocked and was no good to him anymore. He pulled it out and wrapped a bandage on his hand, but he had given himself a hell of a bruise on his hand. Cap and Tommy’s catheters were still working, but there was still no change in their status. Cap was starting to sound a little raspy again. He took a pain pill, counting the ones remaining. A whisper of a thought, how many would it take to kill me? He shook his head, just a touch. He hadn’t really thought that. No… no.

Aran sat at the comm again, readjusted the settings for the twentieth time, and cradled his head in his hands. He had waited too long to repeat his pain meds; the headache, which had been dulled by the earlier medication, had returned in full force, sharp and viscious.

“Calla Station, come in Calla Station. This is the Martelle, we have an emergency. Come in Calla Station.” After hours of trying, Aran’s voice was monotonous, tired, and hopeless. He’d said these phrases a few hundred times now. He repeated them, pausing to let them reply, until it was almost a mantra. Speak. Pause. Speak. Pause. Speak. Pause. Sigh.

“Calla Station, come in Calla.” Aran’s voice was starting to get hoarse. He was starting to nod off once in a while, so tired he could hardly hold his eyes open. Maybe he should quit for a few hours.

“OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, MARTELLE! OH MY GOD, ARE YOU OKAY?!” The woman’s voice, frantic, filled with wild relief, and very, very loud.

Aran jerked his head up so fast, and the explosion of relief in him was so overwhelming – that he fainted.


Chapter Six
At Calla Station

Elise had not heard from the Martelle in almost two days. Forty-three hours, and the last thing she had heard from them was Wu, and “Incoming.”

When Wu was cut off in mid-word, her breath had torn in a shocked gasp, she was silent in a disbelieving moment, and then she gave out a strangled scream, hand to her mouth. “Oh no, oh no,” she kept repeating, and for a few seconds it was all she could say or think. Oh no, not Wu. Not Bennett. Please not the Martelle. Oh god no.

Val immediately began to scan the area the Martelle had last been located, silent, his jaw clenched, his face grim. He only looked up for a moment and scowled when Tursten came running in, shouting, “What happened? What happened?”

Elise stood up, shakily. “Tursten! Didn’t I tell you to get off that channel?!” She was far sharper with him than usual, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.

“Mom, what happened?!”

She tried to shepherd him out the door. “Not now. You go to your room. And you be quiet. Don’t tell Bunny or Mordren.”

“Tell them what? What happened?”

“Dammit, Tursten, you get to your room right now.” She tried to push him out the door.

He balked, and turned and faced her. “Dammit, Mom, tell me what happened. Did they get hit?”

She drew in a breath, about to start yelling at him, frightened for the Martelle and wanting to turn back to help Val find them, furious at Tursten for disobeying her and having to hear Wu get cut off like that. But he faced her with the same grimly determined look that his father had. She swallowed back her anger and reminded herself, not for the first time, that Tursten was older than she always thought he was.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We don’t know.” She glanced over at Val to see if she was still telling the truth. He didn’t look up, just kept screening the readings as fast as he could. “They might have. We’re not quite sure where they were, but it sounded like they had already entered Gabriel… and Wu said…”

“He said incoming. I heard it,” said Tursten when Elise’s voice trailed off into silence. “Are they dead?”

“Tursten! It’s far too early to even be thinking that,” she said, even though it was exactly what she was thinking. “They probably just lost the channel. There’s a lot of interference between us and them.” She tried once again to push him along. “Let us try to reach them, hun, we’ll let you know when we find something out.”

Tursten refused to move. “Let me stay here. I want to find out too.”

“Tursten…” Elise started to raise her voice again.

“Elise, just let him stay,” snapped Val. “Stop arguing with him and get over here to help me.”

Elise hesitated, not wanting Tursten to get any bad news as they did. Then she reached out and drew him back in. “Come on, hun, you sit over there. You can stay, but not too many questions, okay? We’ll let you know when we figure something out.”

Tursten nodded and smiled grimly. “Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad.” He sat and watched them, leaning forward, all attention on them and what he could see of their read outs. Elise took the chair next to Val.

“Tursten,” said Val, “if Sarah or Mordren come back up here, you get them back down to quarters, all right? We don’t want to worry them needlessly.”

“But… oh, all right.” He glanced at the door, wondering how long it would be before his sister came back. She had run off to tell Mordren that she had gotten to talk to Captain Bennett. Maybe she’d forget.

Elise and Valo tried to get a reading on the Martelle again. The sensor information they hed been getting when the communication had cut out had been sketchy at best. The spot the Martelle had entered the nebula was poorly monitored, and the nearest outlying readers didn’t cover the area with any great degree of detail. Valo was trying to put together enough information to figure out exactly where the Martelle had been and what might have happened to it. As the data began to come in, he began to swear under his breath.

“What is it, Val?” Elise, in the meantime, was trying to raise communications with the Martelle.

Val glanced back at Tursten, who stared at them both, listening silently. “Solid body somewhere between a hundred and two hundred meters had a course that might have intercepted them.” His face was stony, but his voice shook. He cast his gaze back down at his readouts and didn’t say another word.

“Might have?” said Tursten, as Elise just stared at Val in shock. “What do you mean, ‘might have’?”

“Didn’t we say no questions, son? Let us try and figure it out,” said Val, without looking up. Tursten sighed and sat back, crossed his arms, and scowled.

Elise turned her attention back to her efforts, whispering, “oh my god, oh my god,” without even realizing it. Valo murmured her name and she stopped, tight-lipped.

For several long minutes Val studied the data. “This doesn’t look good,” he finally said. “They…” He trailed off, his gaze never leaving his readouts.

“Go ahead and tell us, Dad. Whatever happened, I’ll find out sooner or later,” said Tursten.

Val looked over at Elise, who hesitated, but then nodded. “All right,” he said. “It looks like they did get intercepted by the solid body, probably one of the portions off that comet, or a ricochet from one of its earlier collisions. But the readings are so vague, it’s hard to tell. It looks like there’s more large objects coming out of those converging trajectories than went into it, though.” He did not need to explain further. They all understood that meant that there had probably been a collision, and either the Martelle, or the incoming object, or both, had broken up into more pieces afterwards.

“Can’t you get anything more definite?” asked Elise.

Valo shrugged, and turned back to the incoming data without answering. Elise watched him for a moment and then turned back to her readouts, listening closely for any sort of signal at all from the Martelle.

Tursten watched them both, silently willing one of them to suddenly say, ‘oh, there they are – looks like they’re fine, they just had communications cut out’. He had been crossing the days off his calender until the Martelle had arrived. He wasn’t as excited about the new supplies, and the presents they always got, like Bunny and Mordren were. He wasn’t indifferent to them, but what he had really been looking forward to this year was a chance to see Captain Bennett again.

The year before, Captain Bennett had taken him aside and talked to him, by himself, and for the first time in his life, someone had talked to Tursten like he was an adult. The captain had asked him about school, and the classes he was taking, and had joked with him about his own memories of the same classes. Then he’d asked him about his plans for the future, and although his dad and mom had brought up the subject before, it had always seemed like they never really wanted to hear his answers. Or they weren’t ready to hear them. Captain Bennett had listened to him carefully and seriously, and although Tursten had started the conversation as his typical (for then) sullen self, he had warmed up to the subject. He had even nearly told Captain Bennett that what he really wanted to do, more than anything, was to get the hell out of this forsaken rim of barely occupied space and go somewhere with people. But he’d held that back, still not a hundred percent comfortable with any adult, and leery of the captains motives.

This year, though, he had resolved to speak with Captain Bennett about that, and maybe about other things, and maybe this year, like last, the captain would talk to him, man to man. Maybe this year the captain would help him figure out how he’d get out of here, and where he would go, and what he would do. Still too early to leave, maybe, but not too early to start planning.

To Tursten, the thought that Captain Bennett might not be coming after all was like shutting the door on all the possibilities his life had held. He didn’t think of it quite in that way; he was honestly worried about the captain, and about Wu, and about the other crew even though he’d never met them. But the reality of their danger seemed far more remote, too awful to think that they might really be hurt… or dead. He couldn’t get his mind around it, and didn’t want to even try. He just sat, watching his parents, hoping they’d hurry up and get it figured out before his sister came wandering back up and he’d have to leave without knowing what had happened.

But his parents weren’t saying anything. Their anxious silence was worse than any words they could have said. A dozen times he bit back questions, afraid that his next one might get him kicked out.

“I’ve got a signal,” said Elise, then she shook her head. “No, wait.” Tursten stood, unable to control himself, and came up behind her to listen, and to see if he could read her incoming signals. Valo stopped what he was trying to do, and looked sideways at Elise, waiting. “There it is again!”

“What is it? Are they trying to reach us?” asked Tursten.

“It’s their emergency signal,” she said. She shook her head again. “But it’s not coming through right, something’s wrong. It’s too intermittent, it’s not constant like it should be. There, there it goes again.” Val nodded; he had seen the blip in Elise’s data that time.

“But it’s their emergency signal,” said Tursten. “They’re in trouble.”

“Well, we were pretty sure of that,” said Valo drily. “And give us some time, would you Tursten? I think it’s going to be a while before we get this figured out. Maybe you should go check and make sure Bunny and Mordren are okay, and make sure they stay out of here. Tell them we said it was okay if the three of you played some games.”

“Aw, Dad…”

“Go on, Tursten,” added Elise. “We’ll let you know once we know something more certain. No reason you should have to listen to every false alarm and weird signal we have to sift through. Okay?”

“All right,” he said reluctantly. He watched their backs for a few moments, then turned and left. He walked quickly down the corridor, listening for the always-running feet of his sister, and then ducked into the adjunct communications room, softly closing the door and killing the automatic lights. He sat at the comm and swiftly and efficiently hacked into the stream of information that his parents were pulling in. He stared at it as it scrolled by, his eyes following it, shining dimly in the light of the display.

Hours passed. The only thing that seemed to happen was the sporadic, unpredicatable signal of the Martelle’s emergency beacon. It would start to come in regularly, and then disappear abruptly for up to an hour or more. Tursten was not able to watch the whole time, in his secret room; Sarah came running back to see if she could talk to Mister Wu again, and Tursten had to intercept her and take her back down to the living quarters. Mordren was no where to be found; Tursten worried he was moping again, but was also a bit relieved – if he was in another one of his funks, then he would stay out of the way the rest of the day, probably.

He kept Sarah entertained and kept her attention off the Martelle and out of their parents’ hair by playing games with her. Card games, mostly, and some of the simple board games that Elise had invented for them. There were a few that were simple enough for Sarah and still surreally silly enough to entertain Tursten as well, like KSOD, Kamikaze Squirrels of Doom. Usually their mom’s silly games were enough to keep them both laughing, but even Sarah, who was consistently winning, noticed Tursten wasn’t enjoying it as much as usual.

“Tursten, you’re not paying attention!” she said, for the third time. “You went too far again; you’re cheating!”

“Hm? Oh, sorry,” he said, and moved his squirrel back. “Nuts to me.”

“You’re not playing right. I quit.”

“Oh come on, Bunny, I didn’t mean to – come on, finish the game at least.”

“Hmph.” She allowed herself to be talked back to the game, but after it was over, and she had somehow won yet again, she flounced off. For a tired moment Tursten watched her, wondering how she had possibly learned to naturally ‘flounce’ when their mother did nothing of the sort, then he realized she was heading up to where their parents were.

“Bunny! Wait up!”

She turned and stuck her tongue out at him. “Nut thief! I’m telling Mom.” She ran laughing up the corridor as fast as she could.

Tursten chased her. He caught her, but really couldn’t prevent her from pressing on to the communications center without forcing her to stop. He allowed her to go in, and followed, hoping maybe they had found something else out and he might figure out what… but without Bunny knowing, of course. Or maybe they could pry Mom or Dad away for a bit for dinner. Bunny had complained at least once about getting hungry, but Tursten sure didn’t want to have to try and cook for them.

Bunny flung the door open and ran in, and Tursten instantly regretted not stopping her. Val was holding Elise, who was sobbing into his shoulder. Val looked up scowling when they came in; Elise did not raise her head or stop crying.

“Not now,” said Val, quietly, dangerously. “You two need to get out of here. Tursten – you take Sarah to get some dinner. You’ll have to get them in bed tonight.”

“What’s happened?” he said.

“Go.”

Sarah stared at them with wide eyes. “Mom?” she said in a small voice. “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

Elise finally seemed to notice them. She sniffed and wiped her face. “Oh, honey… Honey, nothing’s wrong, Mommy’s just… just worried about our friends getting here safely, that’s all. Mommy’s very tired, that’s all. Nothing’s wrong. Go on with Tursten, now, that’s a good girl.” She bent and kissed Sarah on the head. “I’ll come kiss you goodnight at bedtime, honey, but Mommy and Daddy have to work right now.”

“Come on, squirrel bait,’ said Tursten lightly. “Dinner time. I’ll make your favorite, and if you eat it all and Mom and Dad still aren’t down then it’s double dessert for everyone. Race you… go!”

Sarah jumped and started running, and Tursten started to lope after her, then stomped hs feet loudly, and she squealed and pelted down the hall. He turned back at the door. Elise mouthed Thank you, but he just frowned back.

“You’re going to have to tell us all eventually what’s happened,” he said softly, as softly and dangerously as Val’s earlier words. “You’ll have to admit it to us all sometime. And you’d better do it before they start asking me, because I’m not going to lie to them.”

“Tursten…” started Val, sharply, but Elise held her hand out against his chest, quieting him.

“Tursten, once we know something for sure, we’ll let you know. We still don’t know for sure what’s happened.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he whispered. “I’m not stupid, and I’m not a baby.”

A faint, “looooooooser!” came to them through the open door. Elise and Val were silent, though, and so Tursten turned and left.

Somehow Tursten managed to get Bunny in bed without letting on how seriously they were worried about the Martelle. He had to go find their brother Mordren, who was hiding again, reading. But he followed, asked a few questions about the Martelle, and didn’t seem to care much about the answers. He picked at his dinner and left to go back to his rooms as fast as he could after dinner. He didn’t even seem to be that concerned that Mom and Dad weren’t at dinner. Bunny didn’t like it, but Tursten kept her busy, getting her through dinner, getting her to bed.

After he was convinced she had fallen asleep, he started back up to communications. Halfway there he stopped, went back to the kitchen, and put together a couple meals, then took them up. It occurred to him that it was probably pointless; he’d had no appetite himself, and imagined they wouldn’t either, but maybe they would, who knew.

He slowly opened the door. Elise and Val were both hunched over their respective stations again, intent on whatever they were reading. They both turned when Tursten said, “Hi, I sent Bunny to bed, I hope that was okay.” He set the tray down on one of the equipment tables, pushing things aside to make room. “I brought some stuff for dinner; I didn’t know if you’d had a chance to eat.”

“Thanks,” said Val, sounding a bit surprised. “Thanks for getting the others dinner and to bed, Tursten, we knew we could count on you to help out.”

He shrugged. “Mordren is still up, I think. But he’s down in his rooms.” He stood, waiting to see if they would say anything else.

“Elise, you go ahead and eat first, I’ll keep watching,” said Valo.

Elise nodded and walked over to get her dinner. “Thanks, Tursten. Frankly eating completely slipped my mind.” She sat in one of the chairs by the table. “Have a seat, hun.” She gestured to the chair nearest her, and Tursten came around it and sat down, facing between her and Valo.

“Well? Have you fouund anything yet?”

Elise sighed. “Tursten… Your father and I have been talking, when we could, and… you know we don’t mean to treat you like a child, we know we’ve talked about this before. We just want to protect you, sweetie, we don’t want to see you hurt, even if… even if we know we can’t stop it.” Tursten just stared at her, waiting with dread for her to get to the point. “Hun… we can’t get anything out of the sensors except a very intermittent emergency signal from the Martelle. We’ve tried to track down all the objects that converged and then came out of the…” Elise swallowed. “Out of the collision,” she said softly. “And if any of the objects that came out are from the Martelle – well, they – “ She stopped, trying to collect herself. “It looks like the Martelle was badly fragmented.” Tears began to slowly run down her face, unchecked, unnoticed. “We’ve tried to contact them, but there’s no reply. With even the emergency beacon damaged… We don’t think anyone could have survived.” Her voice trailed off into a whisper.

Tursten had known in his heart that this was coming. But knowing it was coming, and having it come, having his mom sit here and finally tell him the Martelle was dead, that Captain Bennett was dead, was something he was not prepared for, no matter how much he had told himself that he could take it. He bent his head, put his face in his hands, and wept. Elise rubbed her hand over his shoulder, but didn’t try to say anything. What was there to say?

When he had pulled himself together again, at least for the moment, he asked, ‘What are we going to do now?”

Val and Elise switched places, and Val spoke as he ate, hurriedly and mechanically. “We were first thinking we’d have to try and run a rescue out to them. But I don’t think that’s practical; it really doesn’t look at all like we’ve got any rescuing to do. What we need to think about is recovery. We can see if we can recover any of the Martelle, maybe bodies, but we also need to be practical. The Martelle was carrying all our supplies for the next year. We’ve sent a message to FSSI, but when something like this happened out at Ghoston Station a few years ago, they didn’t send another ship out. They had to scrape by for months until another ship could deviate their course off the route to get to them. We’re already low on a lot of supplies; if we have to make them stretch out another year – we might be in big trouble. So we need to see what, if anything, we can salvage off whatever is left of the Martelle.”

Tursten nodded. That was practical. “Seems a little harsh to write off the crew so quickly,” he said.

“We’re not writing off the crew. I’m going to go out there as soon as we can get the tug ship together and ready to go. We’re just not expecting there to be anyone there to save; we have to be realistic, I think. We’ve looked at the data from the sector, we’ve been listening to this pathetic beacon they have. We’ll go out right away, in case by some miracle some of them survived, but, we will go with the expectation that this is a salvage mission.”

“When are you going? Are you both going?”

“Well, like I said, we’ll go as soon as we can get the tug together. And no, we’re not both going; the station has to be staffed by one of us at all times, you know that.”

Tursten was silent, grateful that they both weren’t going. He didn’t think he could stand more than his one night of making dinner by himself that he had managed to pull off that night. “So which one of you is going?”

“I’m going,” said Val. “We thought Mordren and Bunny would be less upset if Mom stayed with them.” He hesitated, glancing at Elise, who kept staring forward at her display, her lips pressed tightly together. “You’re old enough to go along, though, son, and I was wondering if you’d like to come with me. I’ll probably need some help on this.”

Tursten stared at him. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. A thought sped through his mind, This is really not the way I wanted them to let me grow up, but then he nodded. “Sure, Dad, I’ll come along.”

Elise and Valo were less forthright with Mordren and Sarah the next day. They were exhausted; although they had split the time that they had spent monitoring the channels, neither had gotten more than a token few hours of fitful sleep. They told the younger children that there had been an accident, and that Dad and Tursten were going to go get the Martelle and the crew and bring them back with the tug ship. Bunny cried, but mostly because now the long awaited arrival of the Martelle would be put off for several more days. Mordren just nodded, and slunk back to his room as soon as they let him, after a token protest, “How come he gets to go?”

Val and Tursten spent the rest of that day readying the tug ship: checking it over, making sure everything was functional, safe, sturdy. They put a few supplies aboard, food, water, air, and the optimistic addition of some medical supplies. Val wisely threw in a couple packs of cards, knowing how quickly boredom comes out in space. Elise spent the day on the channels, reading the data, hoping in vain for some new sign from the Martelle. Instead, the emergency beacon faltered and failed, and its increasingly weak signal now only came every couple of hours at the most frequent.

Val and Elise set the channels up so that Elise didn’t have to watch them all the time, and so that certain flags on the data would alert her while Val and Tursten were gone. Any significant changes in the emergency beacon, any changes in the fragments that they thought might be the remains of the Martelle, any new drastic changes in that sector that might jeopardize the salvage mission. They all tried to get some sleep that night, and in the morning Val and Tursten got in the little boxy tug ship and took off into the Gabriel nebula. Elise settled down in the communications room and prepared for a long day of monitoring the tug and the readings from what was left of the Martelle.

The tug had cleared Calla’s immediate space and was just over an hour out of station, and heading the long way around to get to the area where the Martelle, or what was left of it, was supposed to be. The Gabriel nebula was still not settled down from the earlier debris storm. Now that the tug was well on its way, Elise had little to do, and Val had stopped his line of communication. He and Tursten were settling into their trip, and were just getting into the portion of the trip where most of what they were doing was waiting to get somewhere. Elise continued to try and contact the Martelle, and read as much as she could of the data following their supposed debris, but at that point she felt it was a next to pointless exercise.

Then a man’s voice came over the channel, faint and garbled for a second. For a moment Elise thought the message was from the tug and that the channel from Val had gotten crossed. She readjusted and then the voice came in loud and clear. Elise was frozen. The voice was a young man’s, clearer and more resonant than Val’s voice, deeper and more mature than Tursten’s. And yet the voice was weary, hopeless. “….Station, Calla Station… come in Calla.” It sounded like the man had been repeating the call for help for days, and had long passed hope of a reply, and was speaking only out of tired habit.

Elise couldn’t believe it. How had anyone lived? Then she started shouting into the channel, in uncontrolled happiness and relief.

The voice didn’t reply.

“Martelle?? Martelle, come in, we read you, come in Martelle, are you okay? Do you have casualties?”

Silence. Elise’s joy dissolved instantly into fear. “Martelle?? Martelle, come in!” Still no answer, and she began to wonder if in her worry and grief, she had imagined the whole thing. She alerted Val on the other channel. He sounded dubious, and his doubt made her angry. “Dammit, Val, I didn’t imagine it! I heard someone from the Martelle, they were trying to contact us!” Val was silent for a few seconds, and she could just see him turning to Tursten and shrugging.

She kept trying to raise the Martelle again, finally pounding her fists against her knees in frustration. She knew she had heard someone; what had happened?

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