"Did you not cloak? I told you how important it was to cloak," he wailed.
"I cloaked," Kira said through gritted teeth. She veered to the ship. Maybe it wouldn't follow her inside.
"Don't go inside the ship. That's a horrible idea."
An instant later a second proximity alert went off, alerting Kira to another eel heading her way.
"Told you." Jin's voice was smug.
Kira ignored him, dipping down as she zigzagged recklessly through wreckage capable of cutting her to pieces if she ran into it.
She rounded a piece of particularly large metal, the first eel right on her tail, the second peeling off to try to trap her from the other side. She flicked her eyes up and to the left, blinking twice to trigger her defensive flares. Hundreds of tiny lights, each one a metal ball bearing no larger than a marble, streaked out from her suit.
The first eel flew into them, the balls attaching to its skin in a big clump. Seconds later they burst, splitting the eel in half.
Kira shot away from the wreckage, just in time for the second eel to come up from underneath. She darted through the deadly obstacle course, the eel no more than a few lengths behind her.
Her new suit with its upgrades was a blessing now. It was its own miniature spacecraft, capable of the flexible maneuvering a ship would never have been able to replicate. She'd designed it to her specifications, sourced every piece of it. Now it was making all that time, effort, and money worthwhile.
The viewscreen expanded and contracted as she searched through the wreckage for the perfect spot to take out the other eel.
There. Two long pieces of wreckage floated together, connected by a thin beam. That was perfect.
Kira veered for it, hitting her turbos and increasing her speed. The eel fell back slightly. Enough for her purposes.
She darted between the two sheets, brushing against one side and leaving several sticky charges on it before moving to the other side. The maneuver was performed in seconds.
She hit a hard reverse on her thrusters, gritting her teeth as the suit shuddered to a stop. She turned on her back to face the opening she’d just flown through and waited.
The eel didn't disappoint, sailing into the small space, its body slithering toward her as it spotted her.
She smiled at it. "Hello, beautiful."
She lifted her arm, lining up the shot as it prepared to dart after her. She fired, a blue light streaking toward the eel. It easily dodged, moving to the side as the light missed it.
Her smile widened. She kicked her thrusters online, using them to send her rocketing away from the eel, her eyes locked on it.
The light hit the sticky charges. A force punched Kira in the chest, then the metal around the eel imploded, warping around it and killing it.
Kira continued her backward glide.
"The eels have been neutralized," she said.
"Good, now that you're done playing, maybe you can get to work. You have four hours of air left and it'll take you nearly that long to get close again," Jin said.
"Roger that," Kira said.
She flipped around so she was facing the ship again. This time she was more cautious in her approach, maneuvering so her path mirrored the space junk orbiting the wreck. It meant a less direct trajectory, but it was safer.
An hour later she finally floated into the hull of the ship through one of the holes on its exterior without setting off any other defenses.
"Jin, you there?" Kira asked once inside the ship.
No response came. It wasn't a surprise really. They'd been prepared for it, and given this ship's defense measures were still online, it was nearly a given. The Tsavitee ships had some type of mechanism that disrupted communications. Even after all these years, Consortium scientists couldn't figure out how it worked.
Either way, it meant Kira was on her own.
The inside of the ship was as dark and oppressive as the outside, a tomb that hadn't been disturbed since the day it was destroyed. Twelve years of silence and solitude, everything in the exact same state as the day it had stopped.
Kira's forehead wrinkled in disgust at the thought of what could be floating unseen next to her. It could be stray metal, the bodies of the crew, or one of the nasty little surprises the aliens liked to leave behind. One never knew, and Kira had encountered all of the above at one point or another.
Kira wasted no time, flicking on her suit's headlamps. She’d turned them off during her approach. The beams from her helmet and shoulders pierced the black. Despite being high-powered, they did little but create thin slices of light in the oppressive blackness. Helpful but not nearly enough.
She unhooked one of the industrial glow lamps from its slot along her side, breaking it against the cold metal and giving it a shake before letting it go. It bobbed to the end of its string, the soft light illuminating the space in a way her suit lights could not.
She grimaced in distaste at the sight of the ship around her. It didn't matter how long she'd been doing this—a Tsavitee ship always gave her the creeps and left her feeling like she was walking through maggots. Still, they helped keep her in business, so she'd table her dislike until she was in her own bunk.
She fired her thrusters in a small burst, propelling herself slowly along the long corridor. In a human vessel, she would be in what was referred to as the lower aft section. It was a term originating from humanity's seafaring history and one they'd adapted once they began to move into space.
Kira couldn't be sure, but if she had to guess she'd say this part of the ship would have been used as quarters for the infantry landing parties. It'd probably also been home to the nasty little monsters and toys they created for the specific purpose of doing as much mayhem and destruction as possible.
For that reason, Kira moved carefully as she headed for the engine room, judging it as the best place to find something worth salvaging.
The government paid top dollar for intact engine parts. They’d been working on reverse engineering the Tsavitee technology, which had given their enemy the advantage.
Even nine years after the end of the war, the government was still having trouble getting their hands on working engine parts.
For all that they were the scourge of humanity, the Tsavitee had been smart. They'd had crew members ready to sabotage the engine and prevent anybody from recovering their technology once the rest of the ship members were dead.
This ship's destruction had been swift and unexpected. Kira's hope was its demise had taken the crew off guard.
She jerked as a shape floated out of the dark, distracting her from her thoughts. The body of a Tsavitee rotated toward her, its face blank and locked in a look of horror, knowledge of its imminent death written there.
The Tsavitee had many forms, depending on its position in their ranks. This one would have been infantry, humanoid in appearance with two legs and two arms, a head with eyes, nose, and mouth. That's where the similarities ended.
This one was larger than any human by at least a foot, its form hulking and muscular with skin the color of graphite. She judged him as in the lower ranks given the visible tusks and the stunted horns curling up from its head.
The horns and fearsome appearance were how they came to be called demons by the human fleet. In a way, they did resemble the creatures of nightmares from old religious texts.
In their own language, Tsavitee meant scourge. That's what they had been to humanity. A devouring horde appearing out of nowhere and decimating humanity with the most bloody and savage war in history.