Timothy and Marv set there and stared at the sight in front of them. Not like they’ve never seen a fully-loaded battleship before, but some sights are just hard to get used to no matter how many times you get to see them.

The ship was miles long, over hundred decks at some places. Unlike fancy cruisers, it had only a few observation decks through which a warm yellow or white light beamed out. The whole structure was covered with thick black metallic-allow, a smooth and shiny surface broken up with torrent guns nests, missile gates, and landing pads.

They just flew next to a big one where a Class-2 transporter, probably sixty meters in length and over ten in width, was slowly going in, delivering the last of needed supplies.

No docking gates on this battleship. You wanted to get something inside of it, you had to land inside.

They passed next to a huge ion gun, powerful enough to blow up miles-wide comets. Timothy saw its full power in battles before, destroying an enemy ship, any ship, regardless of its shielding capacity.

“We’re being tracked,” the young Captain said as he joined them up the front, and pointed his finger at the torrent guns that were turning around and tracking their progress.

“I sure hope you did not piss anyone off inside,” Marv muttered, suddenly feeling nervous. “No betrayed lovers with broken hearts?”

“Relax,” Timothy said before the young Captain could answer. “They just want to make sure we are friendlies and stay friendlies.”

When they arrived at their gate, it already stood open, waiting for them and inviting them in with the white light illuminating its inside.

“You’re free to come in, Transporter 3XY4,” the AI message greeted them.

Timothy fired up his positioning thrusters and tilted the transporter, slightly correcting their path, to get inside right through the middle, leaving over a few meters of space on both sides.

“Transporter 3XZ30, your path needs to be corrected. Please correct it immediately!” AI suddenly sounded off an alarm.

“This is a pilot of 3XZ30,” came Sornia’s voice of the speaker. “My positioning thrusters are not operational! I cannot correct my assent. I cannot correct… and drive it through the gate! I’m ten meters off! I’m three hundreds meters till impact!”

“This close up, they can’t fire a freezing beam, can they?” the young Captain asked.

“No. Not at this angle,” Timothy answered, a smile almost visible on his lips.

“Relax, pilot of 3XZ30. We have detected the malfunction in your positioning thrusters. Please use your main thrusters to slow the approach to the gate and stop the approach completely. We will send the towing ship to bring you in. Position yourself at least a hundred meters away from the ship and wait for their arrival. Their estimated arrival time is… five minutes and twenty-nine seconds.”

While the battleship’s AI was giving instructions to Sornia, Timothy landed the transporter gently down on top of the port’s milky floor.

Almost instantly, the gate behind them closed and sealed them inside. The oxygen vents kicked in all around, creating a breathing atmosphere. At the same time, the transporter was being sprayed with bluish disinfected liquid, intended to kill any kind of molecular abnormality that might have leached to the outside of the transporter during its planetary landing.

“Sixty seconds till the environment is safe,” announced the AI.

The young Captain looked at Timothy’s and Marv’s calm face and then muttered to himself. “You don’t seem upset to leave your partner outside. That seems to be part of your plan then.”

That reminded Timothy to take a deep breath and get up to stretch his back. Then he placed an arm around the Captain and said. “Oh, we almost forgot.”

A second later, he placed and locked a strange plastic bracelet around the lower part of his neck.

The young Captain looked at it in shock. “What is that? Wait…” he said.

“I can’t wear an explosive around my neck!”

“Why not?” Timothy asked. “It almost looks good on you.”

“They’ll detect it! You know that. When we get scanned on the entrance, they’ll detect it! And you’ll have ten guns in your face before you can even blink.”

Timothy left him to finish, and then in a relaxed voice said, “I know. That’s why it’s deactivated. Powered down and undetectable.”

“What?”

“You see this little red dot here?”

“Yes.”

“Looks strange, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a receptor. Something someone way smarter than Marv, I, or you had come up with. It will react if I press this button here,” Timothy said as he took out his comm device and pressed a key that popped in the app he opened there. The necklace around the Captain’s neck instantly lighted up in bright green color.

The Captain froze, fully understanding of what had just happened.

“Now, if I pressed it again-”

“Don’t! I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

“I know,” Timothy said and tapped the app in his comm to power down the device again. “And you can guess that Marv has the same app in his comm, can’t you?”

“You guys… you guys are something else,” the young Captain said as the ball of saliva went hard down his throat. “You think you have an answer for everything. But, I still helped you out there when we talked to Officer Lendelcita. I helped you out there.”

“Yes, yes you did. By the way, is that like her nickname you gave her, or everyone calls her like that.”

“No. It’s a double security code she chose herself. You would have been in a lot of trouble if I didn’t intervene. That must account for something.”

“Yes, yes it does. And as long as you keep on doing it, we will not have a problem. Will we, Marv?”

“Nope. No problem whatsoever.”

“The environment is safe now, and you’re free to come out,” the AI announced. “Please proceed to the green-lighted entrance for the final disinfection and processing.”

“Let’s do this fast and easy and nobody needs to get hurt,” Timothy said and bumped Marv’s extended fist.

“And I think you have some work of your own.”

“He’d be detected if he tries to pass the entrance,” the young Captain said as he stared at Marv that was moving toward the end of the transporter. “Do you have some kind of a concealer for him too?”

“Don’t you worry about me,” Marv said as he approached his flyer. “I have some work to do here.”

“Oooo, he was worried about you,” Timothy said in a soft voice. Then he checked that his MU rifle was fully loaded and on standby, levered his helmet, and finally pressed the transporter’s door open.

“Put your collar up. No need to show off what a lovely present you’ve got from me.”

“Yeah, lovely present it is,” the young Captain growled as he stepped in front of Timothy, buttoning his shirt’s collar as to conceal the explosive.

The green-blinking light door opened automatically when they approached it. Inside was the small four-square meters space that suddenly became very windy.

“No abnormality found,” the AI announced after ten seconds of jetted air flew there them, and then swiftly added. “Have you been outside your armor at any moment during your stay on Reinaxys?”

Timothy tapped his neck and then spoke in the Captain’s voice. “Negative.”

“Please be advised, if you are found to be infected with any foreign material, you will be quarantined and will not receive your payment for the duration of that quarantine.”

“I understand,” Timothy said.

“Please proceed to your neural scanning. A human officer will evaluate you there. Please take your helmet off and power down all your weapons.”

Timothy obediently powered down his multi-use rifle but took a step back.

“Hold that door open,” he told the young Captain as he moved another step back to open the door behind.

The blast came out of the cargo area, a loud explosion of some kind, and shook the whole structure. No flames or anything, just the explosion and a strong quake.

Two doors were still held open, and the Captain half expected to see Marv flying in on his flyer, not knowing how he expected to pass through those two doors. But instead, three basketball-size droids flew through and zipped swiftly above their heads.

“Shoot them!” someone yelled from the inside, but droids were already gone inside the belly of the ship.

Timothy jumped through the door the Captain was holding opened, powered his rifle on the way, and started to shoot at three dumbfounded guards there, paralyzing the main officer there before he could finish the sentence, “Activate the droid de…”

Then he tapped his comm, and the power on the young Captain’s neck suddenly turned light green.

“What have I done?” he said.

“Nothing. Stay with me. Ten meters away and that will go orange,” he said as he raced down the empty corridor.

“You should have told me that before,” the young Captain yelled as he scurried behind him.

“The stairs, we need to get through the stairs!” Timothy yelled, the comm device in his hand blinking ten seconds countdown.

The long, empty corridor seemed to have no end.

“Intruder, the droid intruders,” suddenly the alarm sounded up. “Everyone to their battle stations. Intruders…”

Timothy suddenly stopped, the comm's ticker down to three seconds, and jumped at the slight indentation in the corridor’s wall, opening up the obscured door to the stairs.

“Good, we made it,” he said as he pulled the young Captain in and then pressed his comm device to shut down with only one second displayed on its screen.

“What’s going on?” the Captain got in before a distant explosion shook the ship again, followed by two more explosions of the same intensity.

Instantly everything went dark.

“You hit them with EM bombs?”

“Yes. The weak point of any electronics”

“But that will fry everything!”

“Not everything, everything. But enough…” Timothy said, waiting to see if the disappeared light would come back on. But he waited only for a second, and then, satisfied that it was still pitch-black, turned his armor and comm back on.

“Slicky,” the young Captain said. “You should be called Slicky, not I.”

“I’ve been called a lot of names,” he said as the light in his helmet suddenly provided enough illumination for them to start taking the stairs down. “But Slicky is not one of it.”

“Where are we going? Maybe I can help.”

“Another floor down, then a hundred meters run to…” Timothy said looking at his comm device.

“Those are just warehouses quarters there, supplies and stuff.”

“Exactly. Let’s run. No time to spare.”

The door to the outside of the stairs would not come open on the account of all electronics being shut down, but Timothy used his rifle to blow the opening big enough for both to get through.

Soon they were running through the corridor with soldiers around. But nobody paid them any attention, and they ran to the targeted warehouse without any problem.

“Wait,” the Captain stopped Timothy who pointed the gun up and was ready to blow the gate open.

“There is a mechanical lock,” he explained. “No need to draw attention to us.”

Timothy looked around and put his gun down. A lot of soldiers running around, mostly in darkness, hustling to their battle stations. Some had secondary batteries, while some had already powered up their previously shut-down guns, and that provided at least some light around. They still paid them no attention, but if he tried to blow something up?

“Okay,” he said.

The Captain tapped the side of the door and when a small lid opened, he took a handle out of it and started to spin it around. “Must be kind of a thing that you guys did not have in your days.”

“I guess you guys got smarter,” Timothy said.

The Captain spun the handle, and the door started to open up an inch by inch.

“This is taking too long,” Timothy said and moved to turn the handle around himself.

He did it frantically for a few seconds, and the door was swiftly raised about two to three feet from the floor.

“Enough. Slide through,” he said and watched as the Captain slid easily down before doing the same himself, his armored body almost not making through.

Two guards, in heavy armor, were shocked to see them emerge from the opening, and even more so when Timothy fired two bolts into them, knocking them both out as their dysfunctional armor could not protect them any.

“This way,” Timothy yelled as he saw his comm pointing the way. The warehouse they entered was two stories high, looked enormous with only traces of Timothy’s light offering vision.

They ran to the far side and took the corner to the second row.

“Wait!” Timothy suddenly stopped and held Captain’s hand.

He saw something and put the gun in front of him. Darkness moved, and he positioned his gun and light to track it.

Suddenly, strange shapes revealed themselves not more than ten meters in front of him.

Three figures, standing next to each other, all dressed in dark cloaks, each caring a long shaft in his hand.

They became clearer when those shafts lighted up like long neon bulbs.

“The shadow men,” the Captain muttered as if he saw a ghost or a dragon or another kind of a beast that was only told in legends and fairy tales.

“Shit,” Timothy answered. “We’re fucked now.”