There were two distinct values for “they”—humans and Slan. She was praying for humans . . . but knew how slim that chance actually was. Her fighter’s main systems were down, singularity generator dead, weapons off-line, life support gone, AI fried. All that was working was the crash kit, a pod containing emergency supplies against the possibility of a crash on a hostile world. There was a battery, a nanomedic kit better than what was built into her suit; recharge nano for her suit’s air, food, and water cyclers; and an emergency radio transmitter smart enough to locate nearby friendlies and ping them with a tight-beam data burst. There had to be human ships out there. If the Slan vessel had been hit, the attackers must be human, right? But she had to assume that the Slan would pick up any radio message beamed from the bowels of their ship . . . and nearby human ships might be too distant, now, or moving too swiftly to receive her SOS.
