The station rocks, the deck beneath us shudders. And quick as three very quick things, we’re into the shuttle’s belly, hatchway closed behind us.
“Piece of bake,” Fin grins as the door clunks shut.
I blink. “Piece of what?”
“Bake?” he replies. “Piece of bake—that’s right, isn’t it?”
“It’s piece of cake,” I laugh. “Bake is what you do to cake.”
“Eh,” he shrugs, his exosuit hissing. “I was never that into dessert.”
“Sweet enough already, huh?”
He sticks a silver finger into his mouth, makes gagging sounds.
“I know,” I sigh. “We’re nauseating, de Seel.”
His grin dies as Zila grabs the uniglass from his pocket and hunkers down on the bay floor. Fin and I crouch beside her, and with a soft beep, an image is projected onto the curve of the shuttle wall—a transmission from the uniglass in Nari’s flight suit pocket.
I recognize a familiar corridor, gunmetal gray with bright blue letters—HANGER LEVEL, SECTION B. The picture is bouncing slightly, the sound of Nari’s boots ringing on the grille with her every step.
Déjà vu.
“Nari, can you hear us?” Zila asks.
We see a hand move into frame, tilting the uniglass camera lens upward to give us a brief glimpse of the lieutenant’s head. She’s abandoned her own helmet, snatched another from a supply locker somewhere—plain black, no callsign. She’s also ripped the ident tags off her flight suit breast and the lieutenant chevrons off her sleeves. If she lives through this, she doesn’t wanna get identified as a wartime saboteur, after all.
“Loud and clear,” she mutters.
“Perhaps avoid conversation during this attempt,” Zila suggests. “It only serves to waste precious minutes.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Nari mutters.
“You will perform better this time. I have faith in you.”
“And we appreciate it!” Fin chimes in. “You know, dying for us over and over and stuff.”
“It’s not the dying, Bleachboy,” Nari mutters. “It’s just … these are my people, you know? This doesn’t feel right.”
We exchange a glance at that, but none of us reply.
So here we are again. Problem Number Three, and our biggest by far. Because unless the Eshvaren probe down on Level 2 is disconnected from its power supply, there’s no sense in Fin, Zila, and me shuttling out to the tempest to get hit by that quantum pulse—we’re just gonna die, and the probe that drew us here to this point in time is just gonna draw us back again. We’re like a yo-yo at the end of a string, being pulled back to the same moment, over and over.
Ideally, we’d all be able to help Nari get down to Level 2 and eject the probe from the station. Except we all have to be out in the tempest by the forty-four-minute mark to get snapped back to 2380. So the only person who can cut the yo-yo string holding us here is Nari.
Alone.
Against a whole station full of her comrades.
Even with all this chaos, Level 2 is the most secure part of the facility. There’s four guards at the end of the corridor—big bruiser types wearing heavy tac gear, looking a little nervous as the station shakes and shudders. But they’re holding position until ordered to leave, because that’s what good soldiers do.
Fortunately, Nari is no slouch either. This girl is going to help found Aurora Academy one day—in theory. With the element of surprise, she could take these goons out easily. But here’s another problem. We’ll call it 3.1.
Nari refuses to kill anyone.
And I don’t mean she refuses to just point-blank shoot them—these people are her friends and comrades, that’s no big riddle. But the alert to evac the station is going to happen any minute now, and Nari doesn’t want to leave a bunch of people sprawled unconscious while the station blows up around them either. So as if breaking into the most secure part of the whole facility wasn’t hard enough, she’s gotta knock out everyone she comes across.
Gently.
She insists on giving them the best possible chance of waking up in time to run for it. I love that about her, but it’s killing us. Literally.
The biggest guard raises an eyebrow as he sees her approaching down the corridor. He’s named Kowalski, apparently—Nari told us they spot each other in the gym. His voice is almost drowned out by all the alarms.
“You lost, soldier?”
“Feels that way,” Nari replies, drawing out Zila’s disruptor.
The pistol is set to Stun, but a blast to the face has still gotta hurt. His colleagues reach for their sidearms, but Nari has the drop on them, and with a flash of disruptor fire, the remaining three guards are sprawled on the deck. Even with the weapon at minimum setting, they’re going to be sleepytime for at least fifteen minutes.
“Good work, Nari,” Zila murmurs. “Quickly now.”
Nari snatches Kowalski’s passcard. We’ve discovered by trial and error that the cameras in this section are all still working, so SecTeams are being scrambled right now to deal with this masked saboteur. Nari is officially on the clock.
The ball of ice in my stomach is growing colder.
She barrels into the elevator, stabs the DOWN button. We can hear her breath over comms, strained and quick.
“Remember there are three,” Zila warns. “The third comes from your—”
“Nine o’clock, I know, I know.”
The elevator reaches Level 2, the door pings open. Nari rolls out into the corridor beyond as a security guard yells, “FREEZE!” A shot rings out. Another and another. The lighting is blood-red, flashing to white as Nari lets loose with her disruptor, striking the first guard in the chest. A burst of auto-fire turns the uniglass screen white, and I wince again as I hear a roar, a bang, Nari cursing. The picture shakes wildly, the uniglass falls out of her pocket, and I see Zila’s jaw clench, a tiny bead of sweat on her brow. We hear a grunt, another blast of auto-fire, and the alarm’s shifting pitch as the station shudders again. But the uni is on the floor, and all we can see now is the ceiling, the ducts, red flashing to white.
“SECURITY ALERT, LEVEL 2. REPEAT: SECURITY ALERT, LEVEL 2.”
“Chakk … ,” Fin breathes.
“Attention, Glass Slipper personnel. Hull breach on Decks 13 through 17.”
“Nari?” Zila asks. “Nari, can you hear me?”
“Five by five,” comes the reply, heavy, panting.
The uniglass gets picked up, and we see Nari’s face, the visor of her helmet tipped back. She’s pale, wincing.
“Are you well?” Zila demands. “Status?”
“I got her this time,” Nari grins, ragged. “Nine o’clock, just like you said. It was Liebermann. Goddamn, she’s a good shot.”
“Not as good as you,” Fin smiles.
Nari coughs. “I dunno about that… .”
My heart sinks as I see blood at her mouth, on her teeth. She lowers the uniglass, points the camera at her stomach, and my own stomach rolls at the sight of the ragged bleeding hole in her flight suit, just under her ribs.
“Oh Maker … ,” Fin breathes.
“I’m okay,” Nari insists. “I got this.”