Killie had provided them with engineering coveralls and peaked caps that helped to hide their faces. Laden with tool bags concealing the weapons, they followed her through the many maintenance gangways criss-crossing the station.
‘There’s a hatch in a few metres that exits near the station control room,’ whispered Killie, holding her finger against her lips. ‘At least three staff are always on duty in there, so they must have guards watching over them.’
‘That’ll do as a start,’ said Nexen. ‘The last thing we want to do is have to face all fifty of them at once.’
Killie opened the hatch a crack and peeked up and down the corridor. Bache noticed the grimace on her face appear as she looked up towards the control room door.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Two androids guarding the door,’ she said. ‘What do we do now?’
‘I’ll show you,’ said Zaphir. ‘Just in case I haven’t, get ready to mess up the one who sticks his head through here.’
She pushed past Killie, threw open the hatch and swung through into the corridor. ‘Have any of these lighting panels been flashing on and off?’ she called to the two surprised androids, as she rose up and pointed at the ceiling.
‘What are you doing?’ one of them asked, as they both brought their weapons up and approached.
‘Station maintenance, the same as every day,’ she said, nonchalantly. ‘Is this your first day or something? And who put all these weapons in here?’ she added, now pointing at the open hatch.
‘We were not informed of your presence,’ said the other, keeping his rifle pointing at her as his colleague bent down to peer in the hatch.
‘Who’s he?’ she said, pointing at the control room door.
Two things happened in quick succession. The standing android turned to see who Zaphir was talking about, giving her the split second she needed to pulse him with the zapper hidden in her palm, then she turned and gave the second android the good news in the back of the head as he stuck it through the hatchway.
‘Drag him in,’ Zaphir called. ‘I’ll get the other one.’
Thirty seconds later the two dead androids were out of sight, the hatch replaced and they all approached the closed control room door.
‘Similar scenario,’ said Zaphir, as her finger hovered over the door touch panel. ‘We’ve been called for some immediate maintenance. Look bored and as if this is an everyday occurrence.’
Nexen glanced back at Bache and Killie. ‘You certainly can’t mark her down for lack of confidence,’ he said, rolling his eyes.
Bache smiled and Killie sniggered, causing Zaphir to scowl back at them as she touched the switch.
The control room wasn’t as big as Bache expected. A circular room, about five metres in diameter, where three operators sat with their backs to the centre watching over screens and panels that lined the outer wall. Two more armed androids stood in the middle of the room and turned, expressing surprise as the four engineers trooped in.
‘What are you here for and who escorted you?’ one of them said, slowly bringing his weapon up and glancing past them and out into the corridor.
‘The kaliotropic giro resonator is out of balance,’ said Zaphir. ‘Unless you want to burn up in the planet’s atmosphere in a few hours’ time, we need to fix it and it takes four of us to rebalance it—next question?’
‘Where are the door guards?’ he asked as it swished shut behind them.
‘Captain Fastt ordered them back to the ship,’ said Nexen.
‘Hey!’ exclaimed the second android. ‘You’re Commander Nexen, you should be in custody down—’
The zapper pulsed twice. Both androids clattered to the floor, followed by a spontaneous round of applause from the three human operators.
‘Boy, are we glad to see you, Commander,’ said one of them, standing and shaking Nexen’s hand. ‘I’m Assistant Station Chief Linter.’ He turned to face Zaphir. ‘And what the hell is a kaliotropic giro resonator?’
‘Fuck knows,’ said Zaphir, shrugging. ‘I made it up on the fly.’
Linter’s rueful smile disappeared as he glanced down at the androids and, much to everyone’s surprise, he stepped over and kicked one of them in the head as hard as he could. ‘That’s for the station chief,’ he sneered, then, looking up, he found everyone staring at him and quickly regained his composure.
‘I take it they killed him too?’ said Killie.
‘Threw him out an airlock, alive,’ Linter said, stony-faced. ‘Just to ensure we toed the line. Did they kill the chief engineer too?’
Killie nodded slowly and stared at the floor. ‘Shot him in the head,’ she said. ‘He tried to lock them in the hangar.’
‘We were told there was over twenty of them,’ said Bache.
Linter nodded. ‘Twenty-two with the two traitors, Captain—’
‘Fastt and the major general,’ interrupted Nexen. ‘Actually, they’re not traitors, they’re dead too. The people you saw are android clones designed to trick the ship’s crew.’
‘Ah, crap,’ said Linter. ‘We wondered how they’d been turned so easily.’
‘We need to regain control of that battle cruiser,’ said Nexen. ‘If they get hold of that and its nuclear arsenal, we’re in serious trouble.’
‘It can’t leave the station unless we release the docking clamps from here,’ said Linter.
‘Can we sabotage the release controls and make it impossible to leave?’ asked Bache.
‘Yep,’ said Killie, walking to the far side of the room and opening a cabinet under one of the unmanned panels. She removed several control boards and stuffed them in her tool bag. ‘Won’t work now,’ she said, standing and patting the bag.
‘Are you familiar with the ship’s systems too?’ Zaphir asked her.
‘I should say so,’ Killie said. ‘I’m studying to be an engineer on those new model cruisers. Help get me into the engineering bay and I can really fuck it up.’
Bache sniggered at her turn of phrase, getting a piqued glare from Zaphir.
‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Nexen. ‘Okay, we need you to get us on that ship.’
They left the control room, giving Linter a couple of weapons and making sure he knew how to jam the doors from within and also the bulkhead doors leading up to it, and the elevators too. Killie led them back into the maintenance gangways and slowly, sometimes having to crawl, they made their way down several decks and into the docking ring.
‘There’s four docking tunnel airlocks,’ whispered Killie as they got close. ‘The cruiser is on dock one and the other three are clear.’
Again, she peeked out, this time by lying on the floor and taking a sly peek through an unused ventilation grill.
‘Shit,’ she murmured, glancing back up to the others. ‘There’s about five of ’em loitering around the airlock.’
‘We need a distraction,’ whispered Bache.
‘Bugger,’ said Killie. ‘I should’ve brought my tablet.’
‘Will mine do?’ said Bache, rummaging in his small rucksack.
Killie nodded and spent a few moments connecting up and going through her levels of passwords until she got to what she was looking for. ‘I have a backdoor gateway into the cruiser’s engineering systems,’ she said. ‘It was actually the chief engineer’s as he did some work for them on the ship’s software. I watched him log into it a couple of times.’
‘You have a good memory,’ said Bache.
Killie smiled back at Bache. ‘Thanks, handsome,’ she whispered in his ear so the others didn’t hear.
This time it was Bache’s turn to smile.
‘Are you two going to get a room or storm a battle cruiser?’ said Zaphir, rolling her eyes. ‘Tick tock, people.’
Killie glared at Zaphir before lying down and checked the corridor again. ‘I just need to time this right.’
‘What are you planning to do?’ asked Nexen.
‘This,’ she said, touching an icon on the tablet’s screen.
The sudden noise was loud and confusing, until Bache realised it was the motors powering the airlock closed. They were in the same void behind the wall where the hydraulic system was situated. Before anyone could stop her, Killie had opened the hatch and swung out.
‘Hiya, guys,’ she said to the three androids trapped on the outside of the airlock and staring at it in confusion.
They swung around at the sound of the voice, but were way too late getting their weapons off their shoulders. Two zappers and a laser pistol spoke in quick succession. Again the bodies were crammed through the hatch and hidden as quickly as possible.
‘Why are they so fucking heavy?’ complained Zaphir, heaving the last one over the threshold.
Once they’d tidied up any sign of a problem, Killie removed the hold on the airlock and allowed it to reopen. The others all gathered behind the sliding door. Luckily it was a door type without a window so the two androids on the other side were just as confused as to why the door had closed as the ones had been on the outside. They were not expecting an armed mob to set about them through a half-open airlock and they swiftly followed their comrades through the maintenance hatch.
As they stood facing the cruiser’s inner airlock at the far end of the docking tunnel, Nexen hesitated and turned to speak to Killie. ‘The two androids that are impersonating the senior officers are a different type and if we zap them or shoot them, they self-destruct with such catastrophic force, it would most likely destroy the ship and station.’
Killie’s eyes went wide. ‘Fuck, really?’
The other three nodded.
‘They’re augmented too,’ said Bache, ‘and as strong as a Dasos swamp ape.’
Killie gave him a questioning look.
‘That’s extremely strong,’ he added, realising she wouldn’t have a clue what that was. ‘And bad tempered.’
‘Right,’ said Nexen. ‘There should only be seven androids left, plus our two and judging by the lack of reaction to what we’ve done so far, they’re unaware of our presence. Let’s keep it that way. We also don’t know if they’re able to send reinforcements up from below, hopefully not. So the first thing I want you to do, Killie, is shut everything down except life support and jam it that way. We can’t let them get full use of this battle cruiser.’
‘No problem, boss,’ she said and opened the airlock door. ‘Follow me.’