“Close enough for hand grenades,” Eva replied. “What would I have to do?”
Emle lifted her chin and seemed to center herself. “There are eight separate power sources, four on each side of the Gate at regular intervals. At least five of them must be deactivated in order to render the unit inoperative.”
Qué mierda. The Gate was easily ten kilometers across. Min would have to fly her from one point to the next, and every time they stopped to let Eva out, La Sirena Negra would be an easy target.
“What happens when I take out the fifth power source?” Eva asked.
“In theory, the Gate will simply shut down,” Emle replied. She seemed about to say something more, but hesitated.
“In theory?” Eva asked.
“It may destabilize the Gate and cause a chain reaction that leads to a more . . . unpleasant outcome. The same may occur if you manipulate the components incorrectly. The form of energy used by the Gates can be extremely volatile.”
Eva thought of pinkish-purple cubes prone to exploding and sighed heavily. She turned to Pink. “We going to do this?”
“Take a vote,” Pink said quietly. “We stay and help, or we make a run for the other Gate and hope we’re faster than the competition.”
Eva nodded. “Min?”
Min stroked Mala’s back as the cat purred. They were both surprisingly calm.
“I’m scared of being too slow,” Min said. “But I’m more scared of whatever that thing is being right behind us.”
The mystery ship loomed larger, closer. It hadn’t attacked yet, but if it were anything like its known counterparts, it was simply waiting for a big enough target. It would certainly find plenty to choose from on this side of the Gate, if it came through.
“Sue?” Eva asked.
After a few moments of silence, Sue replied. “Rusty buckets . . . We don’t know anything about them, or where they are, or why we’ve never run into them before. But if they can override Gate controls, the rest of the universe would be in serious trouble. We can’t take that chance.”
Finally, Eva turned to Pink. “Well, Co-Captain? What’s your vote?”
Pink rolled her eye, but it twinkled with mischief. “If you’re fool enough to take a spacewalk in the middle of a firefight, I ain’t stopping you. By my count, you’ve got at least three lives left, so you might as well do some good with them.”
“For a change,” Eva said.
Pink shook her head. “You changed a long time ago. It just took you a while to figure it out for yourself.”
Eva snorted and bumped Pink with her hip, but her eyes threatened to fill with tears. “We’re all going to need a shitload of therapy after this,” she said.
“Too fucking right,” Pink agreed.
“All right, Dr. Carter,” Eva said, returning her attention to Emle. “Show me where the power sources are and how to get them out.”
As Emle explained, Eva carefully, deliberately, did not think about her sister being stuck in another galaxy if she succeeded. Because if she were being honest, by the time she got the Gate closed—if she did it—Mari would probably already be dead.
Digging into the mechanical guts of a reconstructed ancient device was substantially less thrilling when people were blowing each other up all around you, Eva decided. The power sources themselves were carefully shielded and buried deep inside the Gate, accessible through claustrophobia-inducing tunnels, leading to a small alcove where the expected energy cubes waited. They were housed in devices very like the latticed ones used in the Pod Pals; this must be where Josh got the design from, though he had modified it to be much smaller. These cubes were almost a meter on each side, and thankfully Eva didn’t have to physically remove them, because she couldn’t imagine having to carry the things out by herself.
At the bottom of each power source was a small display that presumably gave information about something important, but Eva had no idea what it meant so she didn’t waste time examining it. Instead, she opened a panel next to it and stared at the thick collection of cables inside, each with a different-colored insulating jacket.
“Me cago en diez,” Eva muttered, shining her spacesuit collar light on the bundle. She was supposed to cut the magenta wire, but some genius had decided to also use red, pink, and purple as color options. Even with her own light source, the energy cube cast a nearly magenta glow on everything around it, making it even harder to tell the difference. She had a flashback to arguing with Pink about matching shoes to a purse and sighed.
Eva decided the magenta one was darker than pink and lighter than purple and gently pulled that one away from the others. Slowly, carefully, she eased her wire cutters around the cable and held her breath. If she was wrong, she didn’t know what might happen, but it probably wouldn’t be good.
Dale, mija, she told herself, and squeezed the handles. Snip.
Nothing happened. Or rather, nothing seemed to happen. There was no atmosphere inside the Gate, so there was no sound to indicate anything had changed, and the energy cube continued to glow as before. Mierda.
She was about to open comms to Emle again when she realized the display in front of the device was flashing. It took a moment for her translators to resolve it into an error about the power source, and she exhaled in relief.
One down, four to go.
“Coming out now, Pink,” she said over comms. “Give me two minutes.”
“On our way,” Pink replied. “You better hustle, Eva-Bee, this mystery ship is getting real imminent.”
“Heard.” Eva used her hands to haul herself back down the shaft leading to the access tunnel that had brought her in. It had been a while since she’d done anything in low gravity, and her stomach was doing threatening somersaults every time she reoriented herself.
A minute and a half later, Eva poked her head out of the tunnel entrance and peered at the ongoing space battle. More debris was flying everywhere, the fighters having taken massive casualties as they chased each other around, so now it was more or less down to the larger ships cleaning up what was left. The Forge station’s shields were still mostly intact, but some sections flickered weakly as they were hit, so that wasn’t likely to continue for much longer. They didn’t seem to have launched any evac vessels, which either meant everyone was prepared to go down fighting, or they didn’t think the ships would have a chance of escaping under the circumstances.
Eva glanced through the Gate at the still-approaching mystery dreadnought and wondered why the other forces were still bickering with each other when that thing was on its way, but that was people for you.
La Sirena Negra floated into view, hovering close enough that Eva could reach the emergency hatch. Within moments she was tucked inside, being shuttled to the next access-tunnel entrance.
They managed to repeat this twice more, Eva’s muscles beginning to ache from the exertion of crawling and pushing herself around, before The Fridge seemed to notice something was happening. Just as Eva was about to climb out onto the surface of the Gate, the flash of laser fire nearby sent her scuttling back inside for cover.
“Pink, status?” she asked.
“Playing tag with assholes,” Pink answered. “Sit tight.”
If there was one thing Eva hated almost more than anything, it was waiting. She crouched in the tunnel, tapping the toe of her gravboot against the wall. The sound of her own breathing started to annoy her, and she tried to count backwards from a thousand to stay calm and focused and definitely not think about how her crew was out there getting chased by Fridge fighters.