The Bait in its Trap

“Act first, act fast, act ferociously.”

-Karl Welslak’s wrestling motto

The shuttle ride to the LT was tense and without much conversation. Sid always hated the feeling of acceleration, and he hated it more in that small, confined space of the shuttle. It reminded him far too much of what had happened aboard the Sky Boat, and when he closed his eyes he could almost imagine himself back there. In some ways, this was a much better situation. There was no violence, there was no need to kill, and there was no immediate fear either. But in other ways… Yan wasn't there, by his side, clutching his hand in hers, keeping them both steady. To his left was Hernan, and to his right was Cesper, and in the back were plenty of Fleet soldiers chosen specifically to investigate the station.

Sid kept his eyes closed, and his hand went again and again to his hip where his gun was holstered, checking it compulsively as though it could have vanished from one second to the next. The shuttle jerked around and settled on the floor of one of the bays of the LT with a scrape that Sid could feel in his bones. Sid opened his eyes.

"Is this going to come to pressure?" one of the pilots asked. "They've closed the doors, but my gauge isn't changing."

"Get them on the radio."

"Less-Travel station, this is Imperial shuttle Impulse-4, we request that you pressurize this bay…"

Sid closed his eyes again. "Poke me when we're ready to get out, will you?" he said aloud to anyone who was listening. He had no idea if they responded. With his eyes closed, he was in his own little world, where he could run over and over his plans in his head.

Step one, find whoever is actually in charge of this station. Step two, work out conditions for surrender. Step three– well, steps one and two were far easier said than done. Step three would be probably to find their missing ship. It probably hadn't gone very far, but in the infinite expanse of space, there were far too many places for a ship to hide.

If Yan was here, she probably would have said a prayer or something. That seemed like the type of thing that she would do. Sid, on the other hand, went over and over various disaster scenarios in his mind. What if the ship jumped back in unexpectedly and attacked the Impulse? What if there were people waiting right outside the doors to this bay, ready to kill everyone who got off the shuttle? What if this whole station was rigged to explode?

He couldn't actually discount that last one. If it hadn't exploded yet, it likely wouldn't, but there was no guarantee. All Sid knew was that he was glad that his Fleet team included people who were very good at breaking into ships' computers. Station computers couldn't be that much different.

What if the whole station, since it no longer had the gravity of the giant ship to hold it, started crashing down onto the planet below?

Someone jabbed Sid in the ribs. That would have to be Hernan; Cesper was too professional to be annoying like that. Hernan, though, was willing to cross the professional line, occasionally.

"Bay's all pressurized?" Sid asked, opening his eyes.

"We're ready to go," Hernan signed.

"Great." He extracted himself from the padded shuttle seat and patted his hip once again to check the positioning of his gun. He really didn't want to use it, but this was the first time he was going to be walking into potentially dangerous close quarters. Aside from just existing in his everyday life, anyway. He always forgot, or let it slip out of his mind, that he and everyone around him could be in danger at any time from assassins or kidnappers. He should have learned that lesson, but he knew that if he thought about it too much he would go crazy. He loved to walk down the streets of Yora, heedless of danger, imagined or real.

The whole crew of the shuttle spilled out, as did the crews of two other shuttles who had docked behind them. This was a substantial landing party. All of the Fleet movements were being coordinated by somebody else. Cesper had mentioned her, Commander something, but Sid didn't remember who she was, nor could he pick her out amid the crowd of Fleet uniforms. He kept Cesper and Hernan close at hand. The scene was chaotic, as without gravity, everyone floated freely around until their magnetized shoes found purchase on the walls or the floor.

"Do we know where the leaders are?" Sid asked.

"We were told that someone’s coming down here to meet us," Cesper said. "Over the radio."

"Shouldn't we get out of this bay? Not to be paranoid, but it can just vent to the outside," Sid said. Hernan pointed to the side of the bay, where a few members of the Fleet team were attaching devices to ports in the walls. Computer terminals, perhaps, or just ways to stop the doors to the bay opening and exposing them all to a hard vacuum.

"They got started on that while you were sleeping," Hernan signed.

"I wasn't sleeping," Sid signed back, grumpily. This wasn't the time for jokes. "Should we go into the hall, then?"

Cesper summoned over the squad of Fleet soldiers who had been assigned to guard Sid, and everyone trooped toward the exit door to the bay. It was an awkward, shuffling progress, with everyone swinging their feet in carefully controlled ways to attach to the floors. Sid, who had seen firsthand the grace with which born spacers navigated environments such as this, realized just how stiff and awkward most of the Fleet soldiers were. All of them were from planets; none of them had been born into the wild space faring life.

The hallway was dark and cold, and the air in it felt thin and slightly damp. It was a bad feeling when compared to the sterile, regulated atmosphere of the Impulse. There was something wrong on this station, and it put a chill down Sid's spine. He didn't want to feel paranoid. He didn't want to think the worst, but there was something extremely off-putting about a ship with only emergency lights activated, and with a cool, damp breeze flowing unimpeded through the corridors. There was also an almost imperceptible vibration running through every surface. As Sid ghosted his fingers across the walls of the hallway, he felt it travel up his arm and into his chest where it rattled there like a persistent, tickling cough.

The Fleet soldiers noticed it too, because everyone was on alert.

"Where are we supposed to meet the leader?" Sid asked.

"He was supposed to come to us," Cesper said. At once, everyone in the group snapped their heads to the left; they must have heard something coming down the corridor. Sid turned as well, following the cue. He had turned his glasses sensitivity down, because he knew he was going to be in crowded, noisy spaces a lot, but he was regretting that choice now. He should have set it to the sound alert setting for everything, so that he could have a visual indicator of directional noises. Unfortunately, it was too late to change now. If he wanted to fiddle with the settings, he had to do it at his computer, and it was a frustrating and finicky process.

The disturbance that had caught everyone's attention came into view. A chubby young man was floating down the hallways, bouncing slightly off the walls and presumably making quite the racket. He wasn't a born spacer either; Sid could tell from his lack of absurd height. He just seemed to be a normal man, coming toward them in a hurry. Some of the Fleet soldiers put their hands on their weapons, and Sid's hand went unconsciously to his own pocket, where he could feel the heavy weight of his own gun.

The man was out of breath. "Hey, uh, hi! Sorry for making you wait," he panted. "I'm Eric Shen."

Shen had floppy black hair, and glasses that were thicker than Sid's own. His glasses were unusual in that they didn't have arms to hold onto his ears; they stayed anchored to his face on his nose only. Did he have magnets embedded in there to hold them in place? Perhaps Sid shouldn't judge, but he felt like, if Shen was going to have an operation done to put magnets in the bridge of his nose to hold up his glasses, he might as well just get surgery to fix his eyes.

Sid scooted forward, carefully navigating between the Fleet soldiers who did their best to get out of his way. "I'm Sid Welslak, Apprentice to First Sandreas."

Shen looked confused for a moment. "What about Apprentice Mejia?"

"She's still on the Impulse. We're sharing this mission." Sid didn't really want to take the time to explain all these little details, but it seemed as though Shen wouldn't be able to move on without processing his confusion appropriately.

"Oh, okay, I get it," Shen said. "Nice to meet you."

"Yeah. Mr. Shen, are you in charge of this station?"

"Uh, not really? Commander Willis is."

"Where is Commander Willis?" Sid asked.

"I don't know," Shen said. "He, uh, ran out of the bridge after, well."

"After what?"

"There's this, you know, uh, system wipe thing, to clear the computers, and he tried to run it, but I told him that it would mess with the life support, and he said, uh, life support can go fuck itself, and, uh, well." Shen stopped and wiggled his arms in an approximation of a shrug.

"So is the life support on right now?" Sid asked.

"Yeah, uh, we restarted it. It was down for a little bit. I think Commander Willis got access to the computers, but, uh, Dray ran a backup and got power and everything back on. Mostly."

That 'mostly' made Sid very nervous, but he focused on the name instead. "Dray?"

"He runs IT on the station," Shen said. That didn't give Sid a lot of confidence. After all, if you were on a station with a bunch of secrets, the one person who it would be most vital to have erasing those secrets would be the information technology officer.

"Look," Sid said. "It isn't great for us to just stand around in this hallway. I'm ordering this station under Imperial control, and my people are going to go around and secure the place. You can help us out with this, and avoid a whole lot of trouble." There was the unspoken threat of ‘or you can disobey, and one of us will make your life a lot more difficult.’ Shen had been willing to cooperate so far, so Sid didn't need or want to threaten him aloud, but he paused for a moment as Shen looked around nervously. "Should we expect any threats against us?"

"Uh, I don't know, I think Commander Willis just wants to erase the information. I don't have access to most of that."

"You're his second and you don't have access?"

"I'm, uh, really I'm only here because of the manufacturing?" Sid's glasses provided the unusual punctuation, but Sid saw the unsure look on Shen's face as clear as day in the dim light of the corridor. "I'm in charge of that. And since that's most of what was going on on the station, uh, well, I got to be second."

Sid didn't know enough about how stations operated to dispute that, but he also wouldn't put the stuttering and unsure Shen in charge of a kitchen, let alone a secret industrial space station. Maybe he was an expert on manufacturing technology, and he was helping them, but he seemed like a uniquely poor leadership choice. And that was even comparing him to himself and Kino, two uniquely poor leadership choices in their own rights. He supposed it was true that some people had leadership thrust upon them. At least Shen was willing to cooperate.

Either way, the Fleet soldiers had a job to do, so Cesper relayed the information that the place was mostly safe, and that sent them all streaming out into the body of the station.

"Okay…" Sid said slowly as the majority of the Fleet soldiers departed. "So you think that Commander Willis will not resist arrest?"

"I don't know. He was always, uh, a normal guy before this."

"And who is Commander Willis? Where's he from?"

"Uh, I think his family is from the Devotion? He didn't really talk about it that much." The Devotion must be a Guild Ship that Sid didn't know about. Not that he knew of very many.

"And just to be clear, who is financing this operation?" Sid asked. "Actually, hold on, let's get out of this hallway. Is there anywhere around where the life support isn't likely to fail us?"

"Yeah, uh, just follow me, we can go to the control center." Shen pushed off from the wall and started drifting back the way he came, checking over his back every few seconds to make sure that Sid and the rest of the group were following him.

"Seems like a weird one," Sid signed to Hernan as they drifted down the hallway. Hernan didn't say anything in response, just gave Sid a look and pushed off the wall to move ahead.

The hallways continued to be oddly damp and breezy as they travelled. Sid asked about it, and Shen said that it was due to the turning on and off of the life support, there had to be a certain flushing of the air systems, which made them raise the humidity. It was creepy feeling, and Sid wished that it wasn't a feature of the station. Apparently the dampness would all get cleaned out of the air eventually, but as it was, it felt like he was drifting through a cold soup. They finally made it to one of the rotating rings of the station, and they squeezed into the elevator to go down. Hernan and Cesper both made the independent choice to wedge themselves between Sid and Shen, probably to prevent any sort of attack. Sid appreciated the thought, but he somehow doubted that Shen was going to pose any danger. It was a little funny watching the two men try to edge each other out to protect him, though.

"Sorry that the gravity will be, uh, a bit off. It takes a while to get the rings back up to speed," Shen said as they stepped out. There was a slight feeling of 'offness' as Sid stood in the new hallway. It was probably the minute changes in acceleration as the ring spun back up, as well as the overall lessened gravity of the ring moving slower than usual. Sid had gone through plenty of acceleration changes already today, and this one was just adding to the uncomfortable feeling in his bones.

"The rings were shut down, too?" Sid asked.

"The computers control everything," Shen said. "I guess we're, uh, lucky we were able to get them back up so quickly."

Yeah. Otherwise everyone on the station could have died. Sid didn't voice that particular opinion out loud.

The ring was just as poorly lit as the other section of the ship, and they still didn't see anyone as they walked.

"Where is everyone?" Sid asked.

"I gave the command to go into, what's it called, lockdown? They're all locked in their quarters, or, uh, wherever they were when I gave the order."

Cesper gave an almost imperceptible wince. That wasn't great news for the Fleet teams trying to round everyone up peacefully. People who felt trapped and panicked, especially people who didn't have a clue what was going on on the bridge, and then saw the life support go out (even if it did come back on), probably wouldn't be very receptive to Fleet soldiers rounding them up. Shen was still in front, so Sid leaned over to Cesper and whispered in his ear as quietly as he could.

"You should call that in," Sid breathed. He didn't have the greatest volume control, because he couldn't hear himself, but since Shen didn't turn around, he had probably succeeded in quietly communicating the message to Cesper. Would have been easier if the man knew sign, of course, but one couldn't have it all, Sid supposed.

Cesper stopped and moved to the back of the party, then fell slightly behind as he sent a message to the Fleet teams crawling the ship. He caught back up with the party a few moments later. They all wound their way through the slightly sloped hallways until they came to the control center. Hernan and a few of the soldiers who accompanied them stepped through the doors and checked out the room first. It wasn't empty, unfortunately, and people panicked when the Fleet soldiers entered. Sid's glasses lit up with panicked yells and barked orders from the Fleet team. Shen shoved in past him, and started yelling as well, his ineffectual and stuttering pleas making a mess in front of Sid's eyes. He waited until the whole thing calmed down, and Hernan waved him in.

The room was dark, and for the most part everyone in it now seemed copacetic. There was a foul smell of burned electronics in the air. A quick glance around revealed that it was coming from one particular computer console, to which someone had taken a blunt object. The culprit was most likely Willis, the commander of the station, who had tried to destroy the computers. Apparently he had been inventive in his methods.

Shen was talking to a couple of the people who had been in the room. They were all bunched up in a corner, about five of them, and Shen was reassuring them over and over that the Fleet team wasn't going to arrest them. At least not right away, was a caveat that Sid personally would have added on there, but it probably wouldn't have helped the mood in the room. A few of the Fleet people set themselves up on the consoles and began the arduous process of trying to pull whatever they could out of the command center's computers.

"Shen," Sid called after a moment. Shen whirled around. "What's the procedure for contacting the crew?"

"Uh, stationwide radio is right over there, I think. I'm not really, uh, an expert on everything here. I mainly only deal with the manufacturing."

"Yeah. I know. Does anyone here know about getting in touch with the rest of the crew of this thing? I'd like to make an announcement so that people don't panic."

One of the people in the group in the corner timidly raised a hand, and Shen ushered him over to the console in question. Under the careful watch of Hernan, he got Sid set up to address the ship.

"Hello Less-Travel Station, this is Sid Welslack, Apprentice to First Sandreas, speaking. Your station is currently being boarded by Fleet personnel. This station is now under Imperial control. Please continue to shelter in place, and cooperate with any Fleet personnel who come find you. No violence or resistance will be tolerated, but we are not here to harm you, simply to account for everyone on board. If you require urgent assistance, please contact Station Control. Thank you. I'm handing this over to Eric Shen." Sid passed the microphone to the startled Shen, who almost dropped it. It was important to give the station some address by their own leadership.

"Hi everybody, uh, yeah. This is Shen. Just do whatever the Fleet people tell you to. I'm downgrading the lockdown to a shelter-in-place, so please don't go anywhere. Life support should be staying on from here on, so don't worry about that, I guess. Yeah. If you have urgent problems, call me. Uh, Shen out."

That was the worst public address Sid had ever been witness to, but it would have to do. Thinking about it, even Kino had done a better job, for God's sake. How did Shen get put in this position where he was the only one available to work with Sid?

"Great. Shen. Is there a place where we can talk privately?"

Shen looked pensive for a second. "I guess we can use Willis's ready room? But you'll have to break in the door."

"Not a problem. Where is it?"

Shen led Sid and his entourage out of the control center and down the hall, though they left a healthy group of Fleet soldiers behind. The ready room was indeed protected by a locked door, but all it took was a nudge with the power to open it up. Sid smirked at Hernan, who had been about to ask someone for a kit to open the door. The power did make things quite a bit easier.

The interior of the ready room was plush in a way that the control center was not. Chairs were well constructed, the table was wood instead of plastic, and the whole place was nicely decorated with pictures of the ship being constructed. The pictures were more aspirational than actual; as they showed the ship completed and in orbit around various planets, but they were a nice touch.

A Fleet soldier checked the room for recording devices, though it seemed unlikely that Willis would have wanted to record secret conversations in his own secure ready room on his own illegal station, but it never hurt to be paranoid. Sid, Cesper, and Shen sat down at the table. All the Fleet soldiers and Hernan stood, since they were more security than they were representatives at this meeting.

"So, Shen, I'd like to go over with you what's going to happen with this station," Sid said. He was about to make up a whole bunch of things on the fly, but he knew that Cesper would stop him if he started getting too off base. There was a general plan that Sid was following, but he needed to adapt the specifics to this particular situation, which was the situation where Shen was cooperating and everyone else was not.

From the way Shen's chest rose and fell, it looked like he was heaving a huge sigh of relief. "That is something that I, uh, really do want to know," Shen admitted.

"Great. Fantastic." Sid desperately wanted to avoid messing up the conversation, as he was so wont to do, but that required he be agreeable to Shen, which he wasn't in the right mindset for. "First, I am going to need a comprehensive list of everyone on the station, and what their ranks and responsibilities are, and if you have the information, where they come from. Can you do that?"

"Can you tell me what you're going to, uh, do here first?" Now that Shen was showing some backbone, Sid found that he hated it. He resisted the urge to grimace.

"Okay, let me break this down for you. This station is operating illegally. It's great that everyone is cooperating with us right now, and we're going to try to make this whole transition as painless as possible, but we can't get around the fact that everyone here is acting against the laws of the Empire. So the first step is going to be to check the station over, top to bottom, and make sure that it's not going to explode. Then we need to find everyone, and figure out how much responsibility people have. Once we've done that… It's most likely that everyone will be sent back to their planet of origin."

"A lot of the crew here are spacers," Shen said. "They don't really have, you know."

"I get that, I get that," Sid said. "Unfortunately, the problem of the Guild operating this station does bring into question their whole leadership. Anyone who is a spacer, their family ship will probably need to be investigated for connection to this. I'm not saying that anyone will be jailed, I'm just saying that we need to spend some time figuring out how deep this goes, and punishing the people who are actually responsible." Of course, people who were on this illegal station voluntarily, they should face consequences, in Sid's opinion, but he didn't want to spook Shen out of continuing to collaborate.

"So we're not under arrest?"

"You aren't free to leave the station at the moment, but no one is going to be hauled in front of a tribunal tomorrow, no. The punishments are most likely to be financial in nature, for the people at the top. There is precedent for dealing with issues like this."

"Malstaire?"

"Yes. And I don't believe that most of the station employees faced sentences harsher than planet lock and some community service."

"The crew will be glad to hear that," Shen said.

"We're not announcing this yet," Sid cautioned. "All of this is, as I said, contingent upon your continued cooperation."

Shen nodded vigorously. "What about Commander Willis?"

"He put the lives of everyone on this station at risk with his little stunt. I'm fairly certain that disabling the life support of a ship is a murder charge?" Sid looked at Cesper for confirmation.

"Attempted," Cesper clarified. "There haven't been any casualties yet."

"Well. Yeah. Anyway, he's going to be detained and tried, for sure." Sid looked at Shen to see how he was taking that news. He looked nervous, but then again, when didn't the man look nervous. His face was shiny with either sweat or the overbearing humidity in the station.

"What about anyone who follows his orders, because he's in command?" Shen asked.

"I'm certain we can figure out who bears particular responsibility," Sid said. "But let's not worry about hypothetical right now. Can you get me that crew list?"

"If it's still on the computers, yeah, I guess," Shen said.

"Great. Perfect. The second thing I am going to need is all your manufacturing information that you have. Suppliers, part orders, balance sheets, pay stubs, design documents– everything."

"Probably a lot of that was destroyed…" Shen said. "Willis really wanted to scrub it clean."

"Yeah, I can tell."

"But what about the station?" Shen asked. "Can you tell me what we're going to do?"

"As soon as every room is secure, we're going to begin evacuations. Are preparations being made to dock with the LT?"

"Once it's secure," Cesper confirmed. "Until then it's too much of a risk."

"What do you mean by secure?"

"Everyone accounted for and under watch," Sid said. "That's why I need that crew manifest. And a list of any people who weren't on station," Sid added abruptly, remembering all the dots of shuttles passing between the station and the planet below.

"Yeah, uh, I can get that. I'll need to be at the computers though."

"Fine. Do you have any other questions about what's going to happen here?"

"Are you going after the ship?"

Sid raised an eyebrow. "And you're concerned about that because?"

"Just, a lot of my guys were, uh, on it when it jumped. It wasn't fully set up, so there isn't, like. They don't have an infinite amount of time."

"Then let's hope they see sense and decide to surrender themselves on their own," Sid said. That was a complication that he hadn't expected. To be honest, the fact that the ship was functional enough to even jump, considering the stardrives weren't supposed to be in place, was still bothering him.

"Uh, yeah, I guess," Shen said. Sid suspected that there was something else going on that he didn't know about. Obviously the ship had to have some sort of designated escape spot, or meeting place, just in case something like this happened. Everyone involved couldn't be so stupid as to think that their plan was completely foolproof and beyond the Empire's view. What Sid really wanted to know was which Guild ship was scheduled to pop over to the designated meeting spot every once in a while. There had to be one in case of emergencies. Even the Guild, who, as Sid had come to know all too well, were intent on never abandoning ship, had to have some common sense about this secret operation.

"Quick question," Sid asked. "When's your next delivery supposed to be?"

"Delivery?" Shen asked. Sid couldn't tell what his tone was, but a slight look of discomfort flashed across his face. Was he just playing dumb? It was frustrating that Shen seemed to have his own little motivations, that didn't completely align with Sid's.

"Obviously this place isn't self sustaining either. You're getting supplies in to build that ship, at the very least," Sid said.

"Things come when they come. We don't, uh, it's not possible to have a schedule."

"You're saying that your food deliveries come at random times? Seems hard to believe." Sid gave him a piercing look.

"We can't have the, uh, schedule. Everyone comes at different times." The state of Guild travel had always been a mess, that was true, but Sid didn't believe for a second that this station wasn't expecting deliveries on a semi-regular basis, give or take a few days depending on routes and holdups.

"I'll take a look at your past delivery logs, then."

"The computer is–"

"A mess, yeah, I know. This whole process would be a lot easier if you could give me straight answers about things."

"Sorry," Shen said. "I don't have all the information, I'm really just–"

"Manufacturing. Yeah." Sid was being short with him partially to get him to talk, and partially because he was just tired of the man. He turned to one of the Fleet soldiers. "Take him back to the control center, and have him give you as many logs as possible. We can use this room to coordinate everything."

Shen left with the Fleet soldier, and Cesper spread the message that this ready room would be the new hub of their operation aboard the ship. Someone set up a video link so that Sid could talk to the people still aboard the Impulse. The room gradually filled with coordinating staff as the operation got underway. People combed through computer logs, tried to repair damage that had been caused and retrieve deleted files. Others marked down on a map of the station which rooms had been checked and what areas of the place had been searched. It took a long time, and Sid began to grow more and more antsy the more time passed and Willis hadn't been found. They couldn't start the evacuation until everyone was accounted for.

Even shuttles that had been down hauling things off the planet were found, but the commander was nowhere to be seen. It seemed absurd that on a well mapped out station, being combed over by a top Fleet team, that there was any place a man could hide. The more time that went by, the more mischief (or worse) he could be getting up to, somewhere within the bowels of the station.

Hours passed, and the concern turned into worry, and then the worry turned into fear. Cesper and Hernan shared his concern. Hernan went so far as to suggest that Sid return to the ship, and the whole thing could be sorted out from there. Kino, who wasn't aware or didn't care about the ramifications of the problem, suggested independently that they switch positions so that Sid could have a break.

That would have felt too much like abandoning the place, or setting up Kino as some sort of cow to the slaughter. After all, it was just as dangerous for her to come aboard. Sid declined all offers to abandon the station. Maybe he was more like a spacer than he thought.

When the Fleet teams reported that every room on the station had been searched and cleared, it became obvious that the problem was not going to be solved easily.

"How willing is Captain Wen to put his ship on the line?" Sid asked finally, as he thought over his options.

"It's a Fleet ship," Cesper said, as though that explained everything. Sid looked at him. "He's willing to do whatever the job is, but I'm sure he would prefer that you didn't think of some sort of insane plan that's bound to get everyone killed." He was unusually frank. Perhaps he was getting tired of this waiting game as well.

"I think we need a way to drive the rest of the rats out of hiding," Sid said. "There's already so many discrepancies between this crew manifest and the people we've actually cornered. I'm not sure we have even close to the whole crew."

"And what does this have to do with our ship?" Cesper asked.

"I think we should evacuate everyone we have, get them processed, then we flush the station."

"Flush?"

"Kill the life support, flood with gas, self destruct, I don't know."

"And you were saying earlier about murder?" Cesper asked.

"It's a bluff. I want everyone to come out of the holes they're hiding in. Leave them a couple shuttles to escape on, if they so choose."

"And why did you open this proposal with asking if we're willing to put our ship in danger?"

"We're vulnerable when docked. If Willis wanted to cause a problem, that would be the perfect opportunity."

Cesper tapped a pen on the table, hard. Sid could feel the bounce of it through the tips of his fingers. "You'd have to ask the captain," he said finally. "I'm not remotely qualified to make that call."

"If you do want to do this, you are not going to be on the station during it," Hernan said, speaking up from his position in the back of the room. "Baiting a trap is all well and good, but I draw the line at putting you anywhere near danger."

"I'm not stupid," Sid grumbled.

"Your prior refusals to go back to the ship would indicate otherwise," Hernan said.

"Well, get me on the line with the captain, and we'll talk this over. Will he want to jump the ship close or accelerate, you think?"

"Since you have a plan that involves putting the ship on the line, he's going to save the jump for an exit strategy. I can assure you of that, at least," Cesper said.

"You're not going to talk this over with Kino first?" Hernan asked.

"Don't you think Kino will still be on the bridge?" he asked. She was bound to hear his plan when he delivered it to the captain.

"She keeps weirder hours than you do," Cesper complained.

"Kino wouldn't fall asleep while we're in the middle of something important." Sid had no idea if that was actually true, but he felt compelled to defend his fellow apprentice, at least a little. They were both in this together, after all. Hernan and Cesper gave each other a look, then Cesper's chest heaved up and down in a sigh.

"I'll get the captain for you," Cesper said.

Sid delivered his plan to Captain Wen, who reluctantly agreed. It would take some time to manually get the ship in position to dock, and it would take further time for the station to recall the docking program from the computer from the backup system. It really was a pain that the whole thing had gotten so messed up. Everyone aboard the station should really thank the previous designers of ships and stations that designed the computers such that all life support operations were last to fail and first to recover. They all were multiply redundant and could be restarted independently from the main computer assembly.

As Sid waited for everything to be put in place, he wandered among some of the crew of the station and tried to find out more information from them about where they came from. Either the people weren't being honest or the files weren't, because there were weird anomalies between stories and documents. Perhaps this whole place had been designed with being caught in mind, and so some of the files had been doctored to be more savory, and these people didn't know what their own files said. Names didn't match; planets and ships of origin didn't match; the number of people didn't match. It made Sid think that the whole operation was running on string and glue, since the file system was so clearly chaotic.

Or people could have just been lying to screw with the Fleet, but this was an awful lot of people doing the same type of lies, all different. It seemed implausible.

Finally, everything was ready for the evacuation. Hernan hustled Sid and a bunch of the core team who had accompanied them down to the shuttle bay. The guard posted outside the bay doors let them in. The devices that had been attached to the doors to stop them from accidentally opening were still functional, which was good. Sid wondered if they had been necessary at all. Probably. There was no such thing as an overabundance of caution.

Everyone hoisted themselves into the shuttle, and Sid strapped himself into his seat, resigned to a short, uncomfortable ride back to the ship. He didn't like being in shuttles. He saw their utility, but they didn't remind him of anything good.

"Let me know when we're ready to get out," Sid said, leaning back in his seat and squirming to get as comfortable as possible. He took off his glasses and folded them up on the collar of his cassock. "Poke me or something." He closed his eyes, separating himself from the world at large.

He could feel people settle into the seats next to him, probably Cesper and Hernan, and then the slow and arduous process of getting the shuttle out of the bay. Every jerk and touch of acceleration made him want to open his eyes, but he kept them firmly closed.

The shuttle jerked and stopped accelerating. The people next to him shifted. Then someone was grabbing his arm urgently, reaching behind his back, shoving his head down toward his chest. Sid gasped and opened his eyes. Hernan pressed him down, and he struggled to get into a position where he could see. He had barely a second to process the scene in front of him. Something had gone very, very wrong. A warning light flashed in the cabin of the shuttle, all the Fleet soldiers were ripping themselves out of their harnesses. Hernan was pulling his gun out of his holster. Cesper clawed at a ceiling panel access for something, but there was nothing there.

Unfortunately, that was as far as anyone got before the shuttle explosively depressurized. Anything loose in the cabin and maybe anyone not hanging on were tugged in the resulting massive gust of air heading out the back. Sid was still strapped in, and he couldn't hear the rush of air, but he felt it come streaming out of his lungs in a torrent. Snot poured out of his nose, then dried immediately. His glasses pulled free of his cassock. Sid couldn't think straight as he watched them drift away. The chaotic environment was full of flashing lights, his vision was blurring, and he couldn't breathe. His mouth and tongue tingled as the water on them boiled away.

Sid knew he was the only person who could do something, and he had maybe ten seconds of consciousness left. He processed these thoughts sluggishly. Everything was moving in slow motion. His hands felt thick and clumsy as he unbuckled himself from his seat and pushed off toward the back of the shuttle. There was a man there, in a space suit. Sid ignored him for the moment and focused his attention on… There was the open airlock door.

Debris trailed out behind the shuttle in a long tail. Sid looked at it as his vision blurred further. No one was out there. All the people around him were clinging on to something. Good.

It was easy to focus on the power when there was nothing else standing between him and death. It came to him quickly.

His vision narrowed down to a dot, and he took the power and pushed the exterior airlock door shut. The seal was gone. Sid did the last thing he could think of to do, and he heated the metal of the door white hot and molten, and smashed it to the sides of the shuttle. Sealed.

He passed out.

The shuttle's automatic systems kicked in while he was unconscious, and he came to with a heaving chest as thin air filled the cabin again. His vision was still horribly blurry, and he was drifting– no, he wasn't drifting. Someone was holding him. A thick, gloved hand was pressed to his neck and something else jabbed into his head. The suited man had him, he guessed. The interior of the shuttle was dark, and even if Sid could see well, he wouldn't have been able to tell what was going on. Figures twitched and jerked on the other end of the cabin, where the lights were brighter, and a horrible acrid smell filled the air. Something burning.

Sid struggled, but his whole body felt unresponsive and his joints screamed in pain. The thing jammed into his temple pressed harder. It had to be a gun. What else would it be? He thought Yan had said one time that spacers used knives, because of the damage they would risk causing to the walls of the ship. Or the risk of opening a hole onto vacuum. Sid would have laughed in his delirium if he could, if his lungs would let him. Clearly this person had no problem exposing everyone to vacuum. How did he get on the shuttle? The thoughts drifted through his mind, even as the man shook him and he tried in vain to get his body to cooperate.

The power. He should– If he couldn't focus on what was going on around him aside from the immediate touch, then he would just have to work based off of that. The gun pressed into his head. All he had to do was. All he had to do was. His brain wasn't working. Don't let the bullet leave the chamber. If it couldn't leave, it couldn't hit his head. Right.

Why were his thoughts moving so slowly? The power felt like juggling a gelatin dessert, wobbling right out of his hands and sliding down through his fingers. He took it and made a barrier. He knew how to redirect bullets. He had practiced that so many times. Just make a wall that they couldn't cross. It felt like it shone in his vision, but he couldn't see it. Halfway down the barrel of the gun, just a sharp, hard stop to not let anything escape.

He continued to struggle, and the person in the suit continued to jab him. Sid was finally able to raise his hands to claw futilely at the suited hand on his neck. His nails weren't sharp enough to do any damage, and his fingers felt too weak and clumsy to use to pry. He had no leverage. His knees hurt so much he couldn't move them at all.

Then whatever status quo he was held in broke. The man in the suit jerked backwards, spinning a little. Had someone else shot him? Sid couldn't see. Then the gun held to his head jerked, hitting his skull enough to make his little vision black out momentarily. The hand holding his throat released him, and immediately Sid thrashed to get forward and away from his former captor.

He swam through the thin air, kicking wildly until he reached the other side of the shuttle. In the crazily flashing lights, he saw Cesper, holding a gun steady. No one else was moving. The whole scene was frozen in time. His joints screamed in pain. Cesper said something, but his vision was so fuzzy he couldn't read his lips. Cesper slowly lowered his gun. Dark figures moved around Sid– the Fleet crew? Hernan? He couldn't tell. No one moved urgently. Sid took deep breaths, his lungs protesting.

The danger seemed to be gone. Hernan turned around, face swimming into view, illuminated briefly by the flashing lights. He pointed at the seats. His brain feeling foggy and numb and his body feeling like it was being stabbed with pinpricks, Sid clumsily sat down. It was over.

Why did bad things always happen to him in shuttles? He never wanted to ride in one again.