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the explosion and repeating pointless safety advisories.
    If there’d been a hull breach the decompression would have been over by now.
    There . . . an advisory that the bay ring was being closed down just popped up on the info strip, ostensibly for safety regulators to check for structural breaches. That meant the firefight was out of control and they didn’t want anyone knowing about it. Jalia was glad that she’d gotten down here when she did, else she would have been cut off from her ship. Her crew, however . . .
    She pulled up the personal message channel and checked to see if any of her crew were online, with no luck. They were who knows where within the city. They might not even know there was a problem yet.
    Jalia hoped that meant they were safe from harm, but anything that involved a ship blowing up and had security in full retreat was serious. The Vernera was still hours away from arrival in the Hellis System, with no way to receive reinforcements or even call for help until they got there.
    Then again, maybe that was the point. Getting there. This attack was happening now, why not earlier? Was it coincidence that this fight was happening right before arrival? Maybe there was help waiting for the attackers insystem.
    Punching the comm panel in frustration, Jalia leaned back in her seat and fought the helpless feeling creeping over her. She had no idea what was really going on, but organized fighting onboard a jumpship was rarer than rare. If it was happening, then something big was going on . . . and Jalia knew she needed to get her ship as far away from the fireworks as possible. Whether it be pirates, slavers, or military engagements, private shippers were always getting caught in the middle.
    And when that happened, they usually didn’t make it out alive.
    Jalia had kept clear of trouble for eight cycles, which made her one of the more experienced captains in private ser­vice. Start-­up shippers usually didn’t make it two cycles, being considered easy prey. The one big advantage that shippers had was the vastness of space and losing themselves in it. Getting stuck inside a jumpship with nowhere to go was just plain maddening.
    Jalia stayed at her comm panel, monitoring the news feeds for the next two hours before the firefight finally made the broadcasts. The destruction of the ship had been reclassified as an act of terrorism by a group of Cres commandos that had surreptitiously boarded the Vernera . Security forces had pinned down the Cres to the docking area, securing the onboard population from harm, but they had not yet captured or killed the remaining Cres, whose numbers had been ‘significantly thinned’ by this time.
    All docking areas and support facilities were under lockdown until the situation was rectified, and the deceleration jump into the Hellis System would continue without incident. The jumpship engines were unaffected by the explosion, and the terrorists had no access to that part of the ship. Gorovan apologized for the disruption, but assured that debarkation would continue on schedule once they reached their destination.
    Jalia unconsciously shook her head. That wasn’t right. The Cres weren’t terrorists. If they wanted to blow up your ship they didn’t need to be subtle about it. They had the strongest navy of any known race, and what did they care about a Morrin transport ship? Even if the news feed was true, why hit the ship here and not wait until it left the jumpship. And what were they doing fighting security forces in the bay ring?
    None of this made sense. Jalia knew that Gorovan was putting their own spin on current events, they always did, but what was really going on? How many Cres were there on the ship? And how did they plan on getting off? There were no Cres ships onboard. Jalia had already run through the list of berthed ships the first day here, and had just gone back through it a second time. Where had they