EL-MASRI: Was, you say.

DAMANIS: Yes, sir. She’s gone, sir.

EL-MASRI: Gone as in left? She’s gone off to her next destination.

DAMANIS: No. Gone as in gone, sir. She was taken. And I think everyone else who was on her might be dead now.

EL-MASRI: Malik, I think you need to explain this to me a little better. Was the ship all right when you skipped into our system?

DAMANIS: As far as I know. The ship stays on Erie time, and it was the middle of the night when we skipped. Captain Gahzini prefers to do it that way so that when we move cargo, we do it in the morning when we’re fresh. Or that’s what he tells us. Since the cargo we had for you was already packed when it came on board, it didn’t really matter. The captain does what the captain does. So we arrived in the middle of the night for us.

EL-MASRI: Were you working then?

DAMANIS: No, sir, I was asleep in the crew quarters, along with most of the rest of the crew. We had a night’s watch on at the time. The first thing I knew about anything going on was the captain sounding a general alert. It blasted on and everyone fell out of their bunks. We didn’t think anything of it at the time.

EL-MASRI: You didn’t think anything of a general alert? Doesn’t that usually mean you’re in an emergency?

DAMANIS: It does, but Captain Gahzini runs a lot of drills, sir. He says that just because we’re a merchant ship doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have discipline. So every three or four skips he’ll run a drill, and since the captain likes to skip in the middle of the night, that means we get woken up by a lot of general alerts.

EL-MASRI: All right.

DAMANIS: So we fall out of bunks, get dressed and then wait for the announcement about what the drill is this time. Is it a micrometeor puncture, or is it a systems failure of some sort, or what is it. Then finally Chief Officer Khosa comes on the public address system and says, “We are being boarded.” And we all look at each other, because this is a new one; we haven’t ever practiced something like this. We have no idea what to do. Doctor, my leg is really hurting.

SPURLEA: I know, Malik. I’ll give you something as soon as you’re done talking.

DAMANIS: Can I get something in the meantime? Anything?

GANAS: I can give him some ibuprofen.

SPURLEA: We’re running low on that, Magda.

GANAS: I’ll take it out of my own stash.

SPURLEA: All right.

GANAS: Malik, I’m going to go get you that ibuprofen. It will be just a minute.

DAMANIS: Thank you, Doctor Ganas.

EL-MASRI: You said you never drilled for being boarded. But there have always been pirates.

DAMANIS: We’ve drilled for being pursued by pirates. For that, most of the crew locks down while defensive teams prep countermeasures and the cargo crew preps to jettison the cargo. We work in space. Pirates can’t swing over on ropes and take a ship. They run you down and threaten you to get you to hand over your cargo. Only then do they board the ship, take the cargo and go. That’s why the last resort is throwing out the cargo. If you don’t have it anymore, they have no reason to keep pursuing you.

EL-MASRI: So these weren’t pirates.

DAMANIS: We didn’t know what they were. At first we didn’t know that there wasanyone. We still thought it was a drill. Chief Khosa tells us we’re being boarded and we have about two or three seconds to wonder what that means, and then he comes back on the PA and says, “This is not a drill.” That’s when we knew something was really up. But we didn’t know what to think. We weren’t drilled on this. We stood around looking at each other. Then Bosun Zarrani came into the quarters, told us we were being boarded and that we were to stay in quarters until they heard from him or the captain sounded an “all clear.” Then he picked seven of us to follow him. I was one of the ones he picked.

EL-MASRI: Why did he pick you?

DAMANIS: Me or all of us?

EL-MASRI: Both.

DAMANIS: He picked all of us to be a security detail. He picked me, I think, because I was where he could see me. I didn’t know he wanted me to be part of a security detail until he took us into his office, opened up a footlocker and started handing out shock sticks.

SPURLEA: Shock sticks? Why didn’t you have firearms?

DAMANIS: It’s a spaceship. Guns with bullets aren’t a good idea on any ship that works in vacuum. And the only reason to have weapons on the ship at all is to deal with someone who’s gotten into a fight or is drunk and out of control. And for that, a shock stick is what you want. You zap someone, they go down, you shove them in the brig until they sober up and calm down. So we have shock sticks. Zarrani handed them out to us. There were six of them and eight of us, so I and Tariq Murwani didn’t have any. Bosun Zarrani said that we got to be scouts and told us to turn our PDAs to a general channel so that everyone would know where the enemy was. That didn’t make much sense to me. I figured that we knew where they would come in.

EL-MASRI: Through the airlocks.

DAMANIS: Yes, sir. They’d open them up from the outside and then get through that way. I think Zarrani and Captain Gahzini were thinking the same thing because Zarrani took two of the crew with the shock sticks with him to the port maintenance airlock while the other three went to the starboard maintenance airlocks. But we were wrong.

EL-MASRI: How did they get in?

DAMANIS: They cut through the hull forward and aft and dropped in maybe a dozen soldiers in each spot. I saw the aft breach and the soldiers dropping in and yelled into my PDA about it and then ran, because the soldiers were carrying assault rifles.

SPURLEA: I thought you didn’t want projectile weapons on a spaceship.

DAMANIS: We don’t, sir. The soldiers did. Their job was to take over the ship. And maybe they thought that since they were cutting a couple of holes through the hull anyway, what’s a few bullet holes here and there, right?

GANAS: Here we go. Three tablets.

DAMANIS: Thank you.

GANAS: Let me get you some water.

DAMANIS: It’s too late. I already swallowed them. How long will it take for it to start working?

GANAS: Those were extra-strength, so not long at all.

DAMANIS: That’s good. My leg hurts a lot. I think it’s getting worse.

SPURLEA: Let me look.

DAMANIS: Ahhhhh—

SPURLEA: Sorry about that.

DAMANIS: It’s okay, Doctor. But it’s like I told you. It hurts a lot.

SPURLEA: I’ll see what I can do about cleaning it out again after we’re done talking here.

DAMANIS: I’ll definitely need some real painkillers for that. The last time you did it I thought I was going to hit the roof.

SPURLEA: I’ll be as careful as I can.

DAMANIS: I know you’re doing your best, Doctor Spurlea.

EL-MASRI: You say these were soldiers. Were they Colonial Defense Forces?

DAMANIS: I don’t think so. They weren’t wearing CDF uniforms. These were bulkier and black, and there were helmets covering their heads. We couldn’t see their faces or much of anything else. I suppose that makes sense, since they were coming in from space.

GANAS: If they were cutting through the hull, wouldn’t bulkheads close off to contain the breach?

DAMANIS: I think they’re supposed to, but the automatic systems are sensitive to pressure loss. These guys were coming through without any air going out behind them. I think they must have made a temporary airlock on the outside hull before they cut through.

EL-MASRI: Your captain still could have thrown up the bulkheads to keep them contained.

DAMANIS: The forward breach was right above the bridge deck. The very first thing they did, as far as I can tell, was to take the bridge and Captain Gahzini. Once they had the bridge, they had control of the ship. I was told by one of the bridge crew that when they came through, they ordered the captain to give them his command codes. He refused and they shot Chief Khosa in the gut. He was lying screaming on the deck and they told the captain they would gut shoot every person on the bridge unless he gave over the codes. Once the captain did that, they shot Khosa through the head to put him out of his misery, and then they had the ship.