Saturday Gazette - Octopus in Space

Episode1 - Cephalopod in Space - Act IV

Fighty strikes the floor in frustration. 'How can there be no pods left? The crew are all dead... How could they eject them?'

'Speculation:' the data buddy glows as it speculates. 'Escape pods were ejected prior to death of crew.'

'Well, yes. Unless the boarding party ejected them. Maybe to stop the crew escaping,' we think aloud.

'Speculation: Affirmative, given new data regarding presence of a boarding party.'

Stealy brings Buddy level with our eyes. 'You didn't know about the boarding party?'

'Unable to interface with global system,' it responds.

'[091, 090, 087...],' continues the ship's countdown overhead. We need to get out of here.

'What do we do now?'

'Insufficient context to question,' the buddy says.

'We're about to hit another ship,' we explain. 'We're on a Mixcyxli starship called the Shaxixi...something... and we're about to squirt all our fluids out so we sail in the opposite direction, and hopefully crash into the attacking ship.'

'Suggestion:' the buddy says. 'Proceed to escape pod bay on opposite side of Speculation: the Shaxixith'th.'

'There are more pods?'

'Speculation: positive. Information: Mixcyxli vessels are commonly bilaterally symmetrical.'

We're already moving, hurrying back out into the corridors of the ship. 'You could have said that before,' we tell the device. 'Can you make such suggestions promptly in future?'

'Affirmative,' Buddy says.

We make our way deeper into the stricken ship along a wide corridor, where dead mixcycla lie in pools of blood. But after a moment we hear footsteps behind us. We can tell it's one of the intruders because the sounds alternate bipedally, so we camouflage ourselves against the wall. A lone Ghutarn rounds the corner in its chitinous black armour, holding a weapon before it. We're hoping it just passes by, but it pauses in front of us, looking around.

At exactly that moment – exactly the wrong moment, Buddy says, 'Information:'

We don't wait to hear the information.

The Ghutarn swivels towards us, and Fighty springs up before it and strikes it hard in its visor. It flies back against the opposite wall, and we hurry after it, where Mighty deals it a heavy blow, hopefully finishing it off.

'Can you stay quiet when we're trying to hide?' we ask Buddy.

'Affirmative,' it says.

Cheeky takes the device from Feely, and Chokey has to intercept before Cheeky throws it down the corridor.

'What was the information you had?'

'Current rate of travel is insufficient to reach destination while safe egress using escape pod remains viable.'

'[040, 037, 036...]'

'You mean we're too slow,' we tell it, and turn away from the dead Ghutarn just as Stealy is investigating its possessions.

At the far end of the corridor another group of Ghutarn hurry past. They must be preparing to depart the ship too, we think, suddenly envious of their bipedal nature.