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“Tred!” she called, floating into the room. It was situated deep in the station, where the spin gravity had no effect.
A clamp wrench floated by. She grabbed it out of the air. At least now she had something she could hit someone with.
“Tred?” she called again, floating on. She tried to stick near the wall so had something to push off in case of trouble.
Her system caught movement in a corner. Hefting the wrench, she floated towards it.
“Tred? Is that you?”
“AHHH!” the man screamed, flying out at her. His face was red with adrenaline, but his eyes widened as he saw it was her.
He was brandishing a sensor wand like a baton, halfway through a swing. He pulled his swing, but she leaned back, realizing it would never reach her.
“Engineer, stop it!” she snapped.
“Oh god, Lieutenant, I’m sorry! I thought it was the other Moth-Owl,” he said.
“Other Moth-Owl? You saw someone else, too?”
“Yeah! I think it was a male, but . . .” he trailed off. “My system wouldn’t give me any information, and I just don’t really look at people’s faces . . .” he muttered. “But he had a bigger crest – that means it’s a male, right?”
“Usually,” she replied. “What color were they?”
“Green, like you. Maybe a little darker?”
She wanted to snap that it sounded like he was asking her again, but she pushed that down, and kept her eyes scanning for threats.
“I also saw someone else. A human, on the bridge. He ran, but I couldn’t catch him, then he just . . .”
“Disappeared! That’s what the Moth-Owl in here did. He was angry, his crest was almost straight-up, and he threw a plasma injector at me. It must have been an old one, but it’s bizarre because we recycle used ones and the list of information says that the injectors haven’t been replaced for a year, so why would it be-“
“Okay,” she said, calmly. A straight-up crest was panic, not anger – but lashing out was usually a normal response of a panicked Dessei. “We should head back to the bridge and lock it down. These people clearly did not expect anyone else to come here, and we have a duty to keep sensitive tech out of their hands.”
“Do you think they’re pirates?” Tred asked, goggling at her.
“Possibly. But come on,” she grabbed his arm and started to pull him.
“Wait, what about the fusion generator? It’s a very dangerous device in the wrong hands!”
She glanced at it. “It’s offline right now, yes? We need to go to the bridge and cancel your scan so we can get a message to Lt. Commander Caraval.”
“We can’t cancel it yet,” Tred replied. “It needs to go for a full six hours.”
“What? Why can’t you cancel it?” she asked.
“The plasma injectors are covered in nano-probes. If we try to reactivate it right now it’ll melt them all – not just destroying them but creating impurities in the plasma stream. Do you know how unstable that would make the fusion reaction?”
She actually had no idea, but context alone made it clear. “Can we clear them out sooner?”
“They’re not smart probes. They go in, do their job, then crawl out. We could . . . flush the injectors, but that still takes two hours with a full engineering complement.” He wiped his brow nervously.
“Damn it,” she muttered. She didn’t know that his scan would disable the reactor for that long . . . he’d even asked for her input, and she’d made the call.
“It’s really not a good idea to leave this unattended,” he said. “The security systems are disabled for the scan. It’s why we never do more than one system scan at a time on the Craton. Here, though, they only have one fusion reactor . . .”
“This place is not defensible to us, and the bridge is more key,” she said. “We’ll seal all doors and bulkheads behind us as we go – that should secure the room sufficiently for a few hours.”
Nodding, Tred came with her.
Pirra wished she had a sidearm, but there was no weapons locker on the station – it had been cleared out when the crew had been evacuated.
At each set of doors they came to, she tampered with the system to prevent the recording of their actions. It should keep the intruders from tracking them as they moved through the station.
The gravity was beginning to return as they headed up the third spoke towards the rotation area.
“Lt. Pirra, do you think-” Tred asked, before cutting off.
Other Terrestrial 