it was unlikely she’d wake up while he was there, but he still wanted the chance to be the first to speak to her. The first one to make the demand.
Can you find Spensa?
He felt a growing sense of worry each day Spensa was away without communication. Had he done the right thing, encouraging her to leave like that? Had he stranded her alone, without backup, to be captured and tortured?
He’d broken DDF chain-of-command protocol in telling her to go. Now, if she was captured because of it . . . Well, Jorgen could think of nothing worse than disobeying, then realizing he’d been wrong to do so. So he came here, hoping. This alien was a cytonic; she’d be able to find Spensa and help her, right?
But first, the alien had to awaken. A doctor with a clipboard stepped up to Jorgen, dutifully showing him the report on the alien’s vitals. Jorgen couldn’t read most of the chart, but people tended to be deferent to pilots. Even the highest government officials would often step aside for a man or woman bearing an active-duty pilot’s pin.
Jorgen didn’t care for the attention, yet he bore it because of the tradition. His people existed, lived, because the machine of war worked—and if he had to be one of its most prominent gears, he would bear that position with solemnity.
“Any update?” he asked the doctor. “Tell me what’s not on the chart. Has she stirred? Does she speak in her sleep?”
The doctor shook her head. “Nothing. Her heartbeat is irregular, and we don’t know if that’s normal for her species. She breathes our air just fine, but her oxygen levels are low. Again, we can’t tell if that is normal or not.”
The same as before—and it could be weeks before she awakened, if she ever did. Engineering was analyzing her ship, but so far they hadn’t been able to break the encryption on her data banks.
The scientists could analyze that all they wanted. The secrets Jorgen wanted were inside this creature’s brain. He felt an . . . electricity when he drew near her. A quiet shock that ran through him, like the sensation of being splashed with cold water. He could feel it now, standing over her, listening to the steady hiss of the respirator.
He’d felt that same sensation before, when he’d first met Spensa. He’d thought it was attraction, and surely he felt that. For all she frustrated him, he was attracted like a moth to a flame. There was something else though. Something this alien had too. Something he knew was hidden deep within his family line.
He turned to the doctor. “Please make a note to send me word if anything about her situation changes.”
“I’ve already done so,” the doctor replied.
“By the code at the bottom of the chart, you’ve updated her status priority, requiring me to renew my request. Department procedures 1173-b.”
“Oh,” she said, looking over the chart again. “All right.”
Jorgen nodded to her, then left the infirmary, returning to the corridor of Platform Prime. He was on his way to his ship’s berth to take the ground crew shift report when the klaxons went crazy. He froze, reading the pattern of buzzing alarms that rang through the sterile metal corridor.
Incoming fire, he thought. Not good.
Jorgen fought against the tide of scrambling pilots and crew members running for their ships, and headed straight for the command room. Incoming fire, not incoming ships. The fighters weren’t being scrambled. This was something bigger. Something worse.
His stomach churned as he reached the command room, where the guards let him enter. Inside, the alarm sounds were muted. By now, the DDF had moved much of their command staff up from Alta Base to Platform Prime. Admiral Cobb wanted to separate the military installation from the civilian population, to divide potential Krell targets.
They were still setting everything up though, which made this room a mess of wires and temporary monitors. Jorgen didn’t bother the command staff, who had gathered around a large monitor at the far side of the room. Though he was of a rank to join in operations here, he didn’t want to be a distraction. Instead he made his way down the line of workstations to that of Ensign Nydora, a young woman in the Radio Corps whom he knew from their time in school together.
“What’s happening?” he asked, leaning down beside her.
She responded by pointing to her monitor, which—by the designation at the bottom—was displaying a feed from one of