Wraia's mind roiled in disgust and she took a step back, fighting down the urge to be sick. Even through the distortion of the resin lattice, she knew he was dead. The body completely emaciated, its skin sinking back against the bones. The Manticore's commanding officer had been reduced to a lifeless husk.

"Bastards," Mayeda hissed through gritted teeth. "Is... is he...?"

"No life signs," Zellars whispered.

Wraia wanted to break something. Her free hand curled shut tightly around the grip of her side-arm, as she fought to reign in her anger. Whoever – whatever – had built this place had abducted thousands of human beings, and stuffed them into these pods to be sucked dry. Farmed for... something. It was barbaric, but coldly calculated at the same time, done with a horrific precision of purpose.

"Why would they do this?" Zellars breathed, moving to the next pod in line, shaking her head in disbelief.

Whitlock clicked her tongue, peering closer at the resin. "Human bodies give out a lot of energy. This tech looks sort of... organic. Maybe it's some kind of siphon?"

"You're telling me they turned human beings into some kind of battery?" Wraia hissed.

"I...err, it's just a guess, ma'am."

"Our people," Prallas thundered suddenly. "They are here. Somewhere."

"There must be other chambers. Chambers fitted with your air." Wraia spun to face him. "Go. Some of your people may still be alive. We'll stay here and deal with ours."

Prallas dipped his head once, then snarled an order to his guards so rapidly that the translator bleeped with an error, unable to keep pace. The squad of heavily armoured warriors formed up behind their leader and plunged off into the depths of the station, their heavy footfalls echoing through the chamber.

"You think they'll find survivors?" Mayeda asked.

"Narvorians are tough," Wraia replied begrudgingly as she swung her torchlight back over the line of pods. "I wouldn't bet against them." She gave him a nod. "Keep looking. I want every single one of these pods checked."

She moved away from the grisly visage of Captain Ackerman, trying to beat down her emotions and tackle this problem logically, just like the academy taught her. Follow the facts, follow the rules and procedures.

Wraia almost laughed at herself. There were no procedures that accounted for what they'd found here. Within another pod she found a robed Myrr-Idol colonist, then a naval deck guard from the Manticore, all dead and husked, just like Ackerman. She wondered how long they'd been like this. How long had she been chasing people who were already dead?

Torches flickered in the half-light of the pods, dark figures moving back and forth, from coffin to coffin. A grim quiet settled on the landing party, their footsteps clumping dully about the rocky ground.

"Commander!" Whitlock shouted suddenly, having worked her way almost to the far end of the chamber. "You'd better take a look at this."

Wraia whirled around as fast as her suit would allow. "What?"

"I think I've got a live one here."

She was moving in an instant, leading the thunder of booted feet down the bay to where Whitlock stood, her torch shining into another of the gnarled resin cocoons. Inside she could see a dark-skinned man in an ensign's uniform, his body almost as thin as Ackerman's. His chest, however, was rising and falling feebly, clinging to life for a few more precious moments.

Instantly, Wraia's hand flew to her earpiece.

"Launch-1 to Cobra, Launch-1 to Cobra," she barked. "Lieutenant Gallacher?"

"Gallacher here, ma'am."

"Get Sergeant Waters and a medical team over here immediately, emergency launch protocol!"

"Aye, ma'am," Gallagher replied sharply. "Passing the word."

"Tell Sergeant Waters to prepare to treat a patient on site."

"Aye, ma'am. Launch-2 is prepped – ETA: four minutes."

She could barely contain her gratitude that Gallagher didn't ask any follow up questions. She barely knew how to describe what she was looking it. Thankfully the XO was a naval officer cut right out of the training manual – he knew when to shut up and follow orders.

But Wraia wasn't sure the man inside the pod had four minutes.

"Chief?"

"Ma'am?"

"Cut this thing open."

The chief engineer's face blanched with worry. "Ma'am, are you sure? We could kill him by disrupting whatever's going on in that pod."

"Ms. Whitlock, take a good look." Wraia grabbed the woman by the shoulder and hauled her up close to the resin. "Look at him. He's going to drop dead any second if we let this continue. If he dies, we lose our one lead – our one first hand account of what happened. We can't wait for a medical team to cross the I's and dot the T's. Cut him out of that god-damned pod, now. That's an order!"

Whitlock cleared her throat and saluted, before beckoning Zellars over. Slinging her pack off her shoulders, she opened its front section and unclipped the two-piece portable cutter. Wraia watched as she fitted it together, silently cursing herself for not bringing a medical team in the first place. Her mind had been so focused on the construction of the thing, on the technology and trying to understand just what they were chasing, that she hadn't actually expected to find survivors here.

"Be ready," Whitlock instructed, nodding to Zellars. "Once I peel this bloody thing open, get him out of there, but for God's sake, don't touch that stuff, understand?"

"Y-yes, ma'am."

"I'll do it," Wraia interjected, stepping forward.

"Ma'am, are you sure-,"

"Cut it open, now." Wraia flexed her fingers inside her gloves, and readied herself.

Whitlock took a deep breath, lifted the portable cutter, and squeezed the trigger. A short, sizzling cone of white -hot fire burst from the nozzle, just a few centimetres long. Then she stepped forward to the edge of the pod and started carving.

The resin melted away under the heat, wilting and retracting like a dying plant, with charred tendrils that filled the air with a scent like boiled leather. She moved quickly around the rim of the pod, slicing an ovoid chunk out of its centre where the pulses of light sputtered and ceased. The dead section fell out wards, hitting the ground with a wet smack.

Wraia surged forward and got a grip of the man's overalls, tugging him outwards gently. The resin tendrils that pierced his face and punctured the fabric of his uniform clung on for a couple of stubborn seconds, before popping free. Trickles of blood slid down the man's gaunt face as Wraia eased him free – he was horribly light, as thought she was lifting a bundle of dry kindling.

Scurrying back from the cocoon, she gently laid the man down on the ground. The glare from Whitlock's torch died and the other members of the landing party gathered around her, looking down on the lone survivor. He seemed like a young man, though in his current state it was difficult to be sure, his skin clinging tightly to his bones. His bony chest rose and fell feebly, his breath rattling in his lungs.

"Mr. Mayeda," Wraia said quietly.

"Ma'am?"

"Get back to the landing bay. When the medical team arrives, lead them straight here."

"Aye, ma'am."

She rose from her crouch, grim-faced. "And maybe say a few prayers while you're at it."

*

"Ensign Malik Ansanga," Hooper said quietly, reading from her datapad. "Twenty-four years of age. Gunnery officer, 2nd Class, assigned to the Manticore for his second duty rotation."

Wraia nodded, her eyes rooted to the figure beyond the glass. Inside the Cobra's medical bay, Sergeant Waters and his staff gathered around Ansanga's prone form, laid out on one of the cots and surrounded by machines. Gallacher stood beside her, the XO's face set grimly as he watched proceedings. Even his stony disposition had been shaken by what they'd discovered on the station.

There had been ninety-eight pods in the chamber in total, and only Ensign Ansanga had come out of them alive. An itch gnawed at the back her of her mind; the certain knowledge that that room had only held a tiny fraction of the missing human colonists and crew. She'd already dispatched Whitlock at the head of a boarding party of technicians and medical staff to continue the search.

So far, Prallas Fifthhorn and his warriors had yet to find their own people. More Narvorian boarders descended on the station – she estimated their must have been at least forty of the Rummus Lone's soldiers aboard now, hunting through dead halls, looking for their fellows. She wondered, did any of them share kinship with the missing Narvorian colonists? Relatives? Fellow naval officers? Would it hit them in the same way it had dug a hole in her gut?

In some sense, she had already failed. Ackerman was dead, along with most of his crew.

All, it seemed, except Ensign Ansanga.

"Tough kid," Gallacher commented as her attention drifted back to the medical bay. "You think they can keep him alive?"

Wraia shrugged. "I don't know, Lieutenant. I just don't know. I've never seen anything like it before."

Sergeant Waters had his back to them, leaning over the skeletal form of their lone survivor. The machines blurted readings at regular interval, and she could see the medical gauze masks of the attendants moving and shifting as they spoke.

A few more minutes passed them by before Waters finally straightened up. He said something she couldn't hear; nodded to his subordinates. Then he turned, tugging his mask from his face as he made for the exit to the bay.

Wraia breathed in deep through her nose as the heavy white doors hissed open.

The two naval deck guards on duty parted, and Waters emerged, shedding his medical apron and tossing it aside. Only just cresting the age of twenty-six, this was his first tour as a ship's senior medical officer, and it showed in the harrowed expression on his face. He scrubbed at the thin stubble of dark hair on his scalp with both hands, sighing heavily.

"Well, Sergeant," Wraia said, keeping her voice level. "Report?"

Waters wiped his hands uneasily, glancing back at the survivor. "Honestly, ma'am, it's a miracle he's alive."

"How so?"

"His muscle mass and fluids have been severely degraded. It's as though someone's been quite literally sucking the life out of him. His blood count is thirty-five percent lower than it should be, which alone could have been enough to kill him. If you hadn't found him when you did..." Waters shook his head. "We've started transfusions now to replace the blood loss, and applied a tissue regenerator to help shore up his musculature. It will be a while before he's able to walk and talk under his own power."

"But he'll live?"

"I'm believe he will, ma'am. Though I can't say that he'll make a full recovery."

"What happened?" Gallacher asked. "What could do that to him?"

Waters clicked his tongue thoughtfully. "I'd need to make some more examinations to be totally sure, but looking at the lesions on his body, I think that resin you cut him out of was more than just a restraint. It was actively feeding off him."

"Why?" Gallagher's gaze drifted back to Ansanga.

"Chief Petty Officer Whitlock suggested they were somehow using the human bodies for energy, mining the... power out of them." Wraia winced, unhappy with her own wording, but she pressed on. "Could that be it?"

Waters nodded. "It's certainly possible. Its like his body's been running in overdrive – like that pod accelerated every normal human bodily function and burned through all his reserves. We need to take a closer look at those pods to be sure, though."

She nodded. "I've assigned Whitlock and an engineering team to take samples and see if they can figure out what's actually powering that station."

"What about the Narvorians?"

Gallacher shook his head. "No word so far."

"If their people are here, we might not find them." Waters leaned wearily against the wall. "That place is huge, and we have two ships. We could be here for weeks searching every room in there."

"I'm aware of that," Wraia told him frostily. "There are a lot of our people still missing, too, Sergeant."

"Sorry, ma'am, I know." He squirmed and saluted uneasily.

She let her glower linger on him for a couple of seconds before stepping back over to the glass of the medical bay, folding her arms tight. The medics had moved away from Ansanga now, and she had a clear view of his spindly body, the sharp angles of his bones still visible beneath the flimsy medical shawl.

A host of wires snaked out of the machines, some disappearing beneath the fabric and others visibly plugged into his body, up and down his arms, at the base of this neck and up across his face. Tiny glass supports had been fitted to his ribs to keep them intact through his laboured breathing. Even his bone marrow had been degraded by the ravages of the alien process.

Rage swallowed Wraia then, cold, calculating rage, and a certainty that she wanted revenge. She wanted to find the thing that had done this to a human being and blast it into oblivion.

"Can we speak to him?" she asked, keeping her voice steady as she stared.

"Ma'am?"

"The Ensign. Can we speak to him?"

"I..." Waters hesitated. "I'm not sure, ma'am. He's still extremely weak. His internal organs are barely functioning on their own. We've stabilised him, but any extra stress on his system could be dangerous."

Her gaze hardened as she turned to him. "It's a yes or no question, Sergeant. Ensign Ansanga is the only person on this ship who knows actually knows what we're up against. Now can we speak with him?"

The medical officer cleared his throat, his stance stiffening. He held her stare for a moment, then gave a small nod. "Yes, ma'am. But I'll need to make some preparations – stimulant to bolster his system-"

"Good. How long do you need?"

"Give me a few minutes to prep my team, ma'am. I'll bring you in shortly."

"Go."

Waters nodded and scurried off, back through the medical bay doors. They closed as he started shouting orders to his team, leaving her to watch, and wait.

"Ma'am?" Gallacher asked quietly. "Are you sure about this? If Waters is right-,"

"What would you have me do, Lieutenant?" Wraia hissed. "After everything we've found, every dropspace jump and every bloody system we've come through we still don't know what we're facing. Only Ansanga knows that."

"Then shouldn't we wait? To make sure we can talk to him when he's out of danger?"

"How long would you suggest we wait?" She turned, locking eyes with her XO and pointing back down the corridor. "That station out there – that's just a glorified garage, Mr. Gallacher. The thing that destroyed Myrr Idol and killed Captain Ackerman – it's still out there. We have to find it, and when we do, we have to stop it. We can't do that without knowing what it is."

Gallacher's rugged face pinched with discomfort, but he gave her a small nod. "I understand, ma'am."

"But you don't approve?"

His broad shoulders stiffened. "I'm not sure, ma'am. I just would rather not risk Ensign Ansanga's life. I reckon he's been through enough."

That cut through some of the anger that was still sizzling in Wraia's thoughts and her expression softened. She looked back to Ansanga; watched Waters and his team moving back and forth, gesturing animatedly, preparing their charge to return to the world of the living.

"He's been through more than anyone should," she agreed. "But we have a duty to him, and everyone who didn't make it off that station, to put an end to what did this."

"I know, ma'am." He sighed, shifting to stand beside her again. "I'll wager you weren't banking on this when we shipped out for training manoeuvres."

"No. No, I was not."

A few minutes later Waters turned to face the viewing window, tugging a fresh mask up over his face as he stepped towards them. He raised on hand in a thumbs-up, and then gestured back towards Ansanga. They were ready.

Wraia nodded and patted Gallacher's arm as she stepped past him towards the door. "With me, Lieutenant."

He fell in behind her. The deck guards parted again, saluting as she faced the opening doors. The noise of the medical consoles washed over her and she tensed, bracing herself. With hands clasped behind her back, Wraia stepped into the medical bay, a hundred questions forming on her tongue.

Questions she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answers to.