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They exited the shaft and found themselves in a large open corridor.
‘Where next, Mirage?’ Kainan asked quietly.
‘Those signatures I detected earlier are to your left. I’m sending you a rough map. The air is breathable too. But I’d keep your helmets on for obvious reasons.’
‘Of course,’ Kage said.
‘Khosi, I’m also picking up a small amount of power nearby.’
Kainan’s voice dipped in surprise. ‘I thought the metanoids deactivated the ship’s power grid?’
‘This isn’t coming from the power grid. It’s from a source that I can’t work out. Also,khosi, this part of the ship, has somehow been shielded from our attack. It’s in complete lockdown, except for the shaft, which our metanoids didn’t get at since they can’t fly. So watch out. The could be crats close by still alive and kicking.’
‘Noted, Mirage.Sante.’
‘You’re welcome,khosi.’
The group crept forward covertly, sweeping corridor after corridor, room after room.
‘I’ll repeat it, this place is a planet in itself,’ Riv said wearily after more long minutes of careful advancing.
They rounded where a large doorway led to a massive room beyond. They walked towards it and through the open blast doors. Lights flashed intermittently, illuminating instrument panels, loose wires, and yet more crats slumped over on the floor.
‘The bridge?’
‘One large holo screen, a captain’s console, various stations and multiple displays.Naam, this is it. Ugly as fokk, though,’ Kainan observed. ‘You’d think they’d have updated their interior designs since the last time we were on board one of these ships from hell.’
They walked down the top balcony of the deck, stepping onto the lower part of the bridge. It was just as colourless and drab as the rest of the crat boat.
‘It’s been designed as an armoured capsule surrounded by the bulk of the spaceship’s structure, and reaction mass tanks deliver a great deal of radiation protection without requiring large amounts of extra shielding,’ Kage said, geeking out.
Suddenly, they heard a cough at the entrance to the bridge.
Followed by the spit of a weapon, a warning shot over their heads.
‘Down people, we’ve got company,’ Kainan hissed.
Selene fell to the floor as Kage and Riv sent a barrage of laser fire and bullets across the room.
‘Hey!’ they heard a new voice call out. ‘Stop fire! Stop fire! Unless you want to kill the very people, you came to save.’
Kainan instantly raised a hand, and the firefight ended.
‘It’s safe,khosi,’ Kage whispered to Kainan. ‘I’ve now got eyes on them. And we were right about the ID of the message sender.’
At Kainan’s signal, the boarding party rose to see three new people standing before them.
A woman with features very similar to Selene’s. A lean, tall, and heavily muscled man stood beside her with a quiet, steady gaze. And Massimo Makori, with a gun in one hand, dug into the side of the woman’s cheek. At the same time, he’d wrapped his other flabby appendage around her throat. His tight clutch around her neck had been the cause of the earlier warning cough.
‘Brother!’ Kainan said gruffly into the private channel of their HUD speakers.
‘Sheba!’ Selene whispered. She instinctively took a half step forward, but Kainan’s wrist shot out, pulling her back.
Selene almost fought him, but logic won in the moment, and she eased back.
‘The Sable Group, I presume,’ Massimo said oilily.
‘Damn!’ Riv murmured into his HUD. ‘I thought we got rid of this fokker for good.’
