Other than the sound of a patrol unit moving outside the door, no one spoke.
“Kinematic Signature: 9.99…” Ulga stared at the line and read it aloud, as if confirming she hadn’t misread it. “Damn…”
Gorgon stared at the words “No anomaly detected.” He didn’t move for a long while, then reached out, clipped that section of the log, and sent it to his personal device.
“That thing’s on the Weapons Deck.” Ulga raised her gun again and nodded toward the door. “We still haven’t gotten the spare parts. Now we’ve got the data, too. Are we still going in?”
“What about the structural plans?”
“We didn’t get the full set.” Selin spoke a little faster than before. “This is only a secondary node. We can’t access the full ship layout or the deeper structure of the Weapons Deck. If you want the complete plans, you’ll have to go to the Bridge.”
“Then we’ll go to the Bridge.”
“Hold on.” Ulga frowned. “We only came to find some spare parts. Now we know there’s something like that on the ship, and you still want to head to the Bridge?”
Gorgon didn’t answer right away. He glanced toward the door. Through its thick panels, they could faintly hear at least two security units repositioning.
“This is a mine. Knowing there’s a mine doesn’t mean you know when it’ll go off. Knowing it’s already gone off once doesn’t mean you know where it’ll go off next.”
“Selin, where’s the nearest maintenance parts room?”
“Right below the Bridge.” Selin replied quickly, clearly having already scanned the area. “Most of what you need is probably around there. But that also means…”
“It means even if we don’t go to the Bridge, we’ll still have to head that way,” Gorgon said.
Ulga finally grinned.
“Then it’s simple.” She raised her shotgun again. “We’ll grab the parts first, then swing by the Bridge.”
“Two outside,” Selin added. “Possibly more. They’ll know as soon as you open the door.”
“They already know.” Ulga nudged the toolbox wedged behind the door with her boot.
Gorgon returned to the door, slid the Inspection Pad he’d taken from the corpse back into the pouch at his hip, then rummaged through the duty desk drawer and pulled out a maintenance key. He tossed it to Ulga.
“Your first shot when you open the door takes the one on the left. I’ll take the one on the right.” Then he turned to Jasmine. “You, stay close to me. If you fall behind, don’t expect me to come back for you.”
Jasmine nodded without speaking.
The scraping sound of a chassis outside suddenly stopped.
A second later, a polite knock rang out from the center of the door.
“I knew they were still out there,” Ulga muttered, though the corners of her mouth curled up.
Gorgon placed his hand on the lock and lowered his voice.
“Selin, send me the fastest route to the Bridge.”
“Already sent. Turn right when you get out, go through two service doors, then take the central elevator shaft. Move fast, or they’ll seal off the route.”
“Got it.”
The two exchanged a glance.
“Open it.”
Ulga kicked the wedged toolbox aside as Gorgon turned the lock all the way. The moment the isolation door to the data room slid open a crack, two rectangular red lights lit up outside.
“Don’t go out—!” Jasmine suddenly called softly from behind them.
Gorgon didn’t turn around, but his hand on the door paused. The next second, he kicked the heavy toolbox straight outside. As soon as it cleared the threshold, the first volley of crossfire hit. Several lasers, nearly forming arcs, cut in from two different angles, slicing the toolbox into four symmetrical pieces like blades of light.
They hadn’t fired a warning shot. They’d been ready. Their first volley covered the doorway, the space half a step behind it, and the spot someone would most likely stumble into if they instinctively backed away.
Ulga used that half-second of cover to dash out, bringing her explosive shotgun right up to the security unit on the left.
Boom!
The close-range explosive shell blew away the machine’s sensor band and outer shell. The entire security unit tilted into the wall, its chassis spinning uselessly like a top.
Gorgon stepped from the left side of the doorway to the right and fired twice. Both shots hit the main sensor band of the unit on the right. The machine staggered back half a meter, and a blue backup indicator light beneath its head came on as its weapon turret began searching for an angle again.
“It’s not dead!” Ulga shouted.
Bang!
The third shot hit the joint between its weapon and chassis. The machine shuddered, and its weapon jammed. Ulga rushed forward, planted a foot on the edge of its chassis, lowered her gun, and fired again. The explosive shell blasted the body right off the chassis. The remaining half finally collapsed to the floor, its speaker alone still repeating the warning procedure in fits and starts.
Ulga caught her breath and kicked the machine aside.
“Move.”
The three of them rushed around the corner. The first service door was just ahead. It should have opened automatically, but before they even got close, the indicator beside it changed from white to dark red, and the door panels began closing toward the center. At the same time, another faint scraping sound came from the far end of the corridor behind them.
“They sealed the route,” Ulga muttered. She pulled out the maintenance key they’d just found, hurried forward, and shoved it into the service panel beside the door. She twisted hard. The edge of the cover popped open, and she reached inside, forcing the mechanical locking bar down.
The door shuddered and stopped halfway closed.
“Through.” Gorgon squeezed sideways through the gap, turned, and pulled Jasmine in. Ulga followed last. Before going through, she shoved her explosive shotgun into the maintenance panel. It went off with a roar. The door jerked behind her, then jammed completely.
“If that one back there still wants to chase us, it’ll have to go the long way around.” Ulga grinned.
The power maintenance area was just beyond the second door.
It was locked, and there were pry marks on the bolt. Someone had been here before the incident. Ulga slammed the butt of her gun against it twice, but it didn’t budge. She immediately stuck the cutter into the gap and burned along the lock. The arc of fire lasted less than three seconds before the bolt was severed. She kicked the door open.
The lights inside were brighter than those in the corridor. Rows of racks were neatly bolted to the walls. Many spots were empty, but the remaining equipment was still organized.
“Someone came through to make repairs,” Ulga guessed.
“At least they didn’t take everything.”
Gorgon was already at the racks. He checked the labels and quickly found what he needed: a set of attitude thruster control valves. He checked the flange dimensions and nodded. Next came a high-voltage bridge isolator. Finally, he removed two three-axis inertial gyros from a corner and packed everything into a module case.
“That’s everything. Selin should have a little less to complain about now.”
“Can you carry it?” Ulga raised an eyebrow and swung a heavy pack of cables, general-purpose tubing, and assorted tools onto her back. The weight pulled her shoulder down half an inch, but she didn’t complain.
Jasmine stood at the doorway and didn’t come in. There was no way she could help anyway. She stared at the rows of cabinets and racks, at all the things the two of them had taken out and tossed on the floor, and said nothing.
After following them through the rows of cabinets, they reached the central elevator shaft.
The shaft stood a full level above the outer-ring corridor. The elevator platform was stuck in the middle, unable to go up or down. The maintenance lights on the shaft walls were much brighter than those below. Air pulled up from the bottom of the shaft, and the ventilation flow was clearly stronger than before.
“She’s restoring power.” Gorgon glanced up. “We’ve made too much noise.”
“There’s bad news, you two.” Selin suddenly spoke over the comm.
Ulga gave an irritated click of her tongue.
“Spit it out. We’ve had enough bad news for today.”
“The stress on the connection is changing.” Selin ignored her irritation. “The port aft is tilted three degrees. The hazard-response vessel is still attached, but the angle can’t be corrected anymore.”
Ulga looked down. From deeper below came a dense chorus of sliding sounds. There were at least ten units.
“How long?”
“Don’t ask me that. If you want to make it back alive, don’t linger up there.”
“Let’s get up.”
They didn’t touch the elevator platform. Gorgon kicked open the small door beside it that led to the maintenance ladder. Ulga went first, Jasmine was sandwiched in the middle, and he brought up the rear.
The module case hung from a tether behind his waist. When they were halfway up, two red sensor lights finally lit at the bottom of the shaft. Two security units had reached the opening below and were scanning upward. But because of the limited firing angles, they didn’t shoot. They stayed where they were, their light bands flashing.
They climbed to the middle level and entered the outer-ring passage outside the Bridge. It was noticeably cleaner than the level below, with almost no debris on the floor. Two bodies lay one after the other.
One had died by the access control, and the other was face down beside the outer-ring console. Their wounds were equally neat, as if they’d been shot through before they had time to react. The Engineer Association emblem on the wall was still lit, but only on one half.
The Bridge’s main door was locked tight.
Gorgon scanned the Inspection Pad. The screen flickered for a moment, then a line of red text appeared.
“Permission Denied / Bridge Section Locked Down”
“Damn it!” Ulga kicked the door hard, her magnetic boots scraping out a shower of sparks.
Knock, knock.
A hollow tapping came from beside them. It was Jasmine. She’d crouched in front of a panel that was slightly darker in color than the others. The wear on it didn’t match the surrounding door frame, and a thin ring of weld marks remained along its edge. The girl raised her hand and tapped lightly.
“It’s… hollow behind here.” She looked up at the two helpless adults.
“That’s a maintenance panel someone added later.” Gorgon studied it for two seconds. “Good eyes. Take it apart.”
Ulga grabbed the cutter and burned through the panel’s welds in a few quick strokes, then rammed a crowbar into it. The panel pried open, revealing a narrow mechanical maintenance passage. At the far end was a horizontal manual release bar.
Gorgon had already set the module case aside. He leaned halfway into the passage, felt around for a few seconds, then grabbed the release bar and pushed down, putting his full weight into it. A heavy mechanical reset echoed from inside.
At the same time, Selin’s voice suddenly rose half an octave over the comm.
“Gorgon.”
“Go ahead.”
“I have to disconnect.”
Everyone froze for a moment.
“The connection’s starting to twist,” Selin said, not giving them a chance to ask anything else. “If I don’t disconnect now, the forward section will be torn apart.”
Selin took a deep breath, her voice trembling. “I’ll count to three. Don’t even think about going back the way you came.”
A dull metallic boom echoed in the distance.
“Two.”
Jasmine instinctively looked back the way they’d come. She couldn’t see the connection from here, only a row of lights at the end of the outer-ring passage flickering once.
“One.”
A burst of shrill static came through the comm, then Selin’s voice returned, lower than before.
“The magnetic clamps are blown. The hazard-response vessel has detached.”
The outer-ring passage fell silent for a moment.
No one cursed. No one spoke right away.
From this second on, they were truly stranded aboard the ship.
Gorgon didn’t turn around. He pressed down on the release bar again.
The Bridge’s main door moved.
The heavy panels first retracted inward by half an inch, then slowly slid apart with a grinding sound. Nothing rushed out through the gap, and there was no gunfire.
The air inside the Bridge was colder than the air in the outer ring.
A thin circle of white standby lights glowed around the edge of the Master Control Console. The main observation screen had cracked into several pieces, and the tactical projection was shattered by the fractures.
The captain’s seat was empty. Blood stained the armrest. The bodies in the two deputy seats were still in their final positions: one leaned back in the chair, while the other was slumped over the auxiliary console, an arm hanging down, its fingertips just touching the floor.
Ulga went to secure the door first. She dragged a cabinet over and wedged it into the door track, then used the pull bar to close the door. It wouldn’t shut completely, but it stopped in a position that blocked a direct line of fire without trapping them inside.
“The things outside won’t get in for a while, but don’t count on it lasting.”
“We don’t need to hold out for long anyway.” Gorgon had already reached the Master Control Console. Unlike the equipment in the maintenance area, the Bridge’s main console hadn’t been smashed up. There were no signs of a large firefight here, and those who died had probably never gotten a chance to fight back.