The lights on the command deck were off, with just our stations providing illumination. It was all we had power for.

Vec broke the silence.

“So. What now?” Valid question. Once the code had stopped generating, it had begun a cascading compression operation, a good thing since it had used up all available storage on the ship – whether or not that storage had been writable beforehand. Three hours later, we had just enough free space to make a jump.

It took me a moment to realize that all eyes were on me. Even Harrigan was waiting for an answer.

“How the hell should I know?” I replied, feeling defensive.

“Your brain, your code, carto,” one of the pilots said. “It’s even your unique syntax. It follows that you’d have the best idea of knowing what it does.”

“I don’t.” I was starting to feel irritable. Didn’t they get that I’d been hijacked? “If you want to know what it does, then I’d suggest launching it. Can’t be any worse than our current situation.”

A beat, then Harrigan nodded. “Fire it up.”