By Blood Alone Read Online Free PDF

his stomach. The situation was worse than he had supposed. This construct was as alien as the drifter that occupied his hold, only a lot more frightening!
    The oncoming vessel had the free-form bulk of a ship never meant for atmospheric use. It consisted of three cylinders, all mounted side by side, and surrounded by a framework of metal. The force field that protected the hull shimmered as rock fragments made contact with it.
    The human watched aghast as still another asteroid exploded and the alien vessel pushed its way through the resulting debris field.
    The Pelican shuddered as alien tractor beams locked onto her hull. The drives screamed as they fought to pull the ship free-and junk avalanched off the control panel.
    Jepp sat transfixed as garbage tumbled into his lap. The Sheen ship, for that’s the name he had assigned to it, was unstoppable. It became even larger as a rectangle of light appeared and the Pelican was drawn inside.
    Enormous foot-thick doors started to close; the star field narrowed into a vertical bar and disappeared from sight. Someone or something forced the drives to shut down, the control panel went dead, and the lights went out. Henry had just switched to backup energy banks when a self-guided cable snaked out of its metallic lair, slithered down the ship’s side, made modifications to the way the terminal end was configured, and entered the appropriate socket.
    The AI was still evaluating this development, still searching for guidance, when it was seized, translated, and downloaded to a bubble-matrix prison.
    The storage media held other AIs as well, many of whom were so alien that Henry couldn’t communicate with them, but at least one had human origins. It had been part of a long-range probe ingested two years before. It spoke first. “Hello, mate! And welcome to the cosmic trash bin. I hope you like three-dimensional chess, because there isn’t much to do.”
    Confident that it had evacuated the food’s onboard intelligence, the scout ship cleared the meal for digestion and put the nano to work.
    Jepp fumbled for the emergency lighting switch and toggled it to the “on” position. The overall level of illumination was lower than usual but sufficient to his purposes. “Why did the power go down? What’s happening?”
    There was no reply. The navcomp should have been on-line but wasn’t.
    The human freed himself from the chair, hurried down the main corridor, and into the lock. It took five minutes to close his visor, check his suit seals, and cycle through. The readout on his heads-up display claimed there was no need. Though slightly richer in oxygen than humans normally required, the atmosphere inside the alien vessel was quite breathable. Why? What kind of creatures were they? And where were they from?
    Jepp opened his visor and looked around. What little light there was came from the Pelican’ s navigational lights. He saw beams, like the ribs of a whale, and gently curved hull plates. There was no sign of his hosts, or captors, as the case might be. “Hello-is anybody out there?”
    Silence. It was disconcerting, but preferable to a horde of bloodthirsty aliens. There was a loud creaking noise followed by the sounds of metal on metal as the Pelican collapsed onto the deck.
    Startled, and more than a little surprised, Jepp hurried to inspect the damage. There wasn’t any. Not in the normal sense, anyway. Most of the landing skids were missing! The margins were smooth, with no sign of the tool or tools used to create them.
    That’s when the human noticed what looked like a river of metal snaking away from the ship and into the surrounding gloom. A hastily conducted investigation revealed numerous rivers-all headed in the same direction! The Pelican was being disassembled at the subatomic level and hauled away.
    There was a groan as still another structure gave way and the Pelican settled onto the deck. That’s when Jepp realized the importance of salvaging whatever he could.