Communications.
Get a signal out. Alert someone, anyone, before the terrorists accessed the missiles.
She took off again, rounded a corner too fast, and almost skidded out. The east corridor stretched ahead—long and exposed. She stumbled to a halt.
The corridor was too quiet except for the alarm’s mechanical scream. Where was everyone? Over forty crew on Seven, and she’d seen no one.
She slowed her pace.
Nothing.
No footsteps or voices.
No breathing but her own.
North corridor. Comms room ahead.
She dropped to her knees at the corner, peering around.
The corridor to the comms room stretched empty. Thirty feet of exposed passage. The door at the end stood ajar.
Her pulse crashed in her ears.
A trap?
Or abandoned?
You’re achieving nothing hiding here, Jen.
She surged to her feet, sprinted, slammed her back to the wall beside the comms room door.
No sound inside.
She pushed it open with her fingertips.
The room was destroyed. Shattered monitors. Dark screens. Wires ripped like torn veins. A console fizzed in intermittent white flashes.
She stepped inside. Glass crunched under her boots. She reached for the backup keyboard—hard-wired to the satellite uplink.
Her fingers pressed into something tacky.
She lifted her hand.
Blood.
On the keyboard. On the console. Pooling beside the chair where someone had?—
Her stomach heaved. She staggered back, wiping her hand on her coveralls. The stain smeared but didn’t disappear.
God.She wasn’t sending a mayday out from here.
The missile command center.
“Missile Command.” She keyed transmit on her radio. “I’m en-route?—”
Shit.If they’re monitoring the frequencies?—
She cut the transmission.
