Page 31 of Starlight, Starbright
I stare at him. “You want to use us as bait.”
“I want proof we can use in a tribunal. Video evidence of him locking us in, triggering cascade failures, trying to kill us.” He meets my eyes steadily. “But only if you're willing. The risk is real.”
I think about Walsh's sabotage. The asteroid field. The cut conduit. The radiation surge during my EVA. All the times he's almost killed us and has walked away. “Let's catch this bastard.”
Zoric pulls up a comm channel. “Security Chief Hale, we're proceeding to the core. Maintain close surveillance. Arrest anyone who attempts to seal the access doors or trigger system failures.”
“Understood, Captain. I'm in position.” Tobias's voice comes through clearly. “You're covered.”
We descend through three levels of access corridors, the temperature rising as we approach the core. The vibration increases too, the ship's heartbeat stronger here where all the power converges. Emergency lighting casts everything in red, making our shadows stretch and twist.
The core chamber opens before us. Three stories tall, conduits and relays arranged in precise geometric patterns, the fusion reactor at the center throwing heat that makes the air shimmer.
The problem shows itself immediately. The primary relay junction sparks intermittently, each flash accompanying a drop in power flow. Not catastrophic yet. But getting there.
“We need to reroute power around that junction.” I pull up schematics on my tablet. “Redirect through the secondary coupling, bypass the damaged section entirely.”
“That will require manual recalibration at three points.” Zoric has already identified them on his own display. “I'll take the upper access. You handle the primary and tertiary.”
We move through the chamber in the kind of synchronization that only comes from weeks of working together. I don't need to tell him which tools to use or how to adjust the couplings. He doesn't need to explain his reasoning. We just work, solving the problem with the efficiency of long practice.
Fifteen minutes. The relay stabilizes. Power flow normalizes. The sparking stops.
“That's it,” I say, securing the last connection. “The core's stable. We've bought ourselves maybe an hour before...”
The doors seal.
Both exits, simultaneously, the metal grinding shut with the finality of a tomb. Emergency lights flicker once, twice. Then the backup power kicks in and everything steadies except my pulse.
“Paige.” Zoric is already at the nearest control panel. “The locking mechanism has been overridden. Remote access.”
Static crackles through the chamber's comm system. Then Walsh's voice, distorted but recognizable. “You've stabilized the core. Clever. But the cascade program is still running. In approximately thirty minutes, every system I've mapped will fail. Life support. Engines. Everything.”
I pull up my engineering diagnostics. Watch errors multiply across my screen. He isn't lying. Walsh has planted some kind of virus, and it is propagating through our systems like digital poison.
“You could have been great, Chief Martin,” Walsh continues. “You have the talent. The dedication. But you choose him over your own species. Now everyone pays the price.”
The comm cuts out.
I meet Zoric's eyes across the chamber. Watch his markings cycle through colors, amber, red, back to silver, as he processes the threat. Thirty-four minutes to save ten thousand lives.
“The doors,” I say. “Can we override from here?”
“Not remotely. He's locked us out of the primary systems.” Zoric moves to the manual access panel. “But every door has emergency mechanical release. If we can access the panel behind this wall...”
“I can cut through.” I am already pulling tools from my belt. “Plasma torch. Give me three minutes.”
“You have two.” He pulls up the ship-wide systems on his tablet. “I'll work on stopping Walsh's program from here. If I can isolate the cascade, slow it down...”
“Do it.” I activate the torch, blue-white flame cutting through metal. “I'll get us out.”
We work in silence broken only by the hiss of cutting metal and the occasional curse from Zoric as Walsh's program evades his attempts to shut it down. The heat in the chamber climbs. My hands shake from adrenaline and the torch's vibration, but I keep the cut line steady.
“Twenty-eight minutes,” Zoric reports. “The program is sophisticated. Multiple redundancies. I'm slowing it but I can't stop it.”
“Keep trying.” The torch breaks through the outer wall. I switch to manual tools, prying back the panel to expose the mechanical release. “I'm almost there.”
“Paige.” His markings blaze gold despite everything. “If we get out of here...”
