The Vital Abyss

The drive chamber housed the most complex piece of technology on the ship — the energy core. Once, this might’ve been called the engine room. Now, the device contained within the chamber was so far advanced that it was no longer mechanical. The drive energy core sat in the centre of the room — an ugly-looking metal box, so big that it filled the place, adorned with even more warning signs. This was our objective.

Olsen stole a glance at the chamber, but stuck close to me as we assembled around the machine. Kaminski paused at the control terminal near the door, and sealed the inner lock. Despite the reinforced metal doors, the squealing and shrieking of the Krell was still audible. I knew that they would be through those doors in less than a minute. Then there was the scuttling and scraping overhead. The chamber was supposed to be secure, but these things had probably been on-ship for long enough to know every access corridor and every room. They had the advantage.

They’ll find a way in here soon enough, I thought. A mental image of the dead merchant captain — still strapped to his seat back on the bridge — suddenly came to mind.

The possibility that I would die out here abruptly dawned on me. The thought triggered a burst of anger — not directed at the Alliance military for sending us, nor at the idiot colonists who had flown their ship into the Quarantine Zone, but at the Krell.

My suit didn’t take any medical action to compensate for that emotion. Anger is good. It was pure and made me focused.

“Jenkins — set the charges.”

“Affirmative, Captain.”

Jenkins moved to the drive core and began unpacking her kit. She carried three demolition-packs. Each of the big metal discs had a separate control panel, and was packed with a low-yield nuclear charge.

“Wh-what are you doing?” Olsen stammered.

Jenkins kept working, but shook her head with a smile. “We’re going to destroy the generator. You should have read the mission briefing. That was your first mistake.”

“Forgetting to bring a gun was his second,” Kaminski added.

“We’re going to set these charges off,” Jenkins muttered, “and the resulting explosion will breach the Q-drive energy core. That’ll take out the main deck. The chain reaction will destroy the ship.”

“In short: gran explosión,” said Martinez.

Kaminski laughed. “There you go again. You know I hate it when you don’t speak Standard. Martinez always does this — he gets all excited and starts speaking funny.”

“El no habla la lengua,” I said. You don’t grow up in the Detroit Metro without picking up some of the lingo.

“It’s Spanish,” Martinez replied, shooting Kaminski a sideways glance.

“I thought that you were from Venus?” Kaminski said.

Olsen whimpered again. “How can you laugh at a time like this?”

“Because Kaminski is an asshole,” Martinez said, without missing a beat.

Kaminski shrugged. “It’s war.”

Thump. Thump.

“Give us enough time to fall back to the APS,” I ordered. “Set the charges with a five-minute delay. The rest of you — cállate y trabaja.”

“Affirmative.”

Thump! Thump! Thump!

They were nearly through now. Welts appeared in the metal door panels.

Jenkins programmed each charge in turn, using magnetic locks to hold them in place on the core outer shielding. Two of the charges were already primed, and she was working on the third. She positioned the charges very deliberately, very carefully, to ensure that each would do maximum damage to the core. If one charge didn’t light, then the others would act as a failsafe. There was probably a more technical way of doing this — perhaps hacking the Q-drive directly — but that would take time, and right now that was the one thing that we didn’t have.

“Precise as ever,” I said to Jenkins.

“It’s what I do.”

“Feel free to cut some corners; we’re on a tight timescale,” Kaminski shouted.

“Fuck you, ’Ski.”

“Is five minutes going to be enough?” Olsen asked.

I shrugged. “It will have to be. Be prepared for heavy resistance en route, people.”

My suit indicated that the Krell were all over the main corridor. They would be in the APS by now, probably waiting for us to fall back.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

“Once the charges are in place, I want a defensive perimeter around that door,” I ordered.

“This can’t be rushed.”

The scraping of claws on metal, from above, was becoming intense. I wondered which defence would be the first to give: whether the Krell would come in through the ceiling or the door.

Kaminski looked back at Jenkins expectantly. Olsen just stood there, his breathing so hard that I could hear him over the communicator.

“And done!”

The third charge snapped into place. Jenkins was up, with Martinez, and Kaminski was ready at the data terminal. There was noise all around us now, signals swarming on our position. I had no time to dictate a proper strategy for our retreat.

“Jenkins — put down a barrier with your torch. Kaminski — on my mark.”