Still, he had those two hours. He might as well put them to use.

The sensor station in the control complex had been completely demolished in the crash. But the piloting console had its own recorder, which turned out to be relatively undamaged.

The data diamonds, unfortunately, had been jolted out of their recording slots by the impact and mixed together in a random heap at the bottom of the recorder housing. Digging them out, he found a handheld reader and began sorting through them. Before death took him, perhaps he could at least learn who had done this to them.

Though even as he set to work, he knew down deep that he was merely distracting himself. Whatever he learned here, that knowledge would die with him. No K'da or Shontin would ever find this tomb.

The dust slowly began to clear from the air as Draycos worked, gradually settling into a soft coating that seemed to cling to every surface. The faint sounds of wildlife began to be heard, too, bird and insect twitterings as alien as the world they inhabited. Occasionally Draycos noticed his ears twitching as another new noise entered the mix, but he paid no conscious attention to the sounds. His entire focus was on the diamonds.

But all the concentration in the universe couldn't make up for what was no longer there. Damaged in the crash, the diamonds no longer held the full record of the ambush. Only bits and pieces remained, images here and there. Nothing he could use to positively identify the ships that had attacked them.

As slowly but inevitably as the settling of the dust around him, he felt his strength begin to drain away. The data reader slipped first from his grasp, the diamonds themselves became too difficult to hold, and all too soon he found himself huddled on the deck beside Polphir's body. He was still three-dimensional, but as he gazed at the tips of his forepaws he thought he could see a hint of flattening in the ridges around the claw sheaths.