Samira

“Okay, are you ready?” Sora asked, and I nodded hesitantly. So they uncapped a small vial under Krom’s nose. The orc struggled against the overly tight restraints as he cursed and tried to move his head away from the vial.

We hadn’t had any way to bind him other than the restraints that were used on me, which meant that even at their widest setting, they were still too tight for a burly orc. It couldn’t have been comfortable for him.

“What in the hells? Where am I? What’d you do to me?”

Sora dematerialized the vial in their usual way before taking a step back from Krom and answering. “You made the mistake of turning your back on Samira during our little fight and paid the price for it. Now, you’re going to help us escape.”

“And why would I do that?” Krom asked as he eyed Sora up and down. He didn’t look upset, and any disorientation he might have had from waking up was already gone.

“Because if you do, then we won’t kill you.” Sora crossed their arms and glared at the orc.

“Gonna need to do better than that,” he smirked up at Sora, which made me nervous. “If I help you, then the others will kill me. It’s a lose-lose situation. Sweeten the deal, and maybe I won’t sound the alarm.”

“I disabled your implants. You can’t sound the alarm.” I took a step forward and met Krom’s glare. “Listen, we’re going to blow up this ship when we leave. I figured we’d offer you a way off since you defended me, but if you don't want to take our help, then you can just die with everybody else.”

Both Sora and Krom looked surprised. Which made me realize that I might have forgotten to explain that part of the plan to Sora.

“And how exactly are you planning on doing that? Are you hiding a kiloton of explosives up your skirt?”

“I don’t wear skirts.” I frowned at Krom before explaining. “Can’t you feel it? Your reactor is already oscillating off cycle by at least a full rotation, probably closer to two or three. Even if this were one of Andromeda’s actual class sevens, and not some cheap knock off, you’d be lucky to last a month before it tore itself apart. As it is, I’m just going to spend ten seconds with a wrench and speed things along. This place will be Aether debris in the next half-hour. Along with anybody left aboard.”

Krom blinked dumbly at me before turning to Sora. “Did you understand any of that?”

“I got the important bits,” they smiled down at the orc. “Mainly the part about turning this place to scrap. So, tell me, are you actually willing to die for these assholes?”

“Five-hundred thousand.” Krom replied, which caused me to look at Sora in confusion. “Five-hundred thousand credits. That’s my price.”

“One-hundred thousand, and you get to keep whatever ship we end up stealing.” Sora countered before I could argue. He was literally going to die if he didn’t come with us. Why were we negotiating with him? Hells, we should have been the ones charging him!

“I get to choose the ship we steal?” Krom asked and smiled when they agreed. “Deal!” The restraints fell to the floor as he stood completely unbound. “Now, what’s the plan?”

“Don’t look at me. My plan was to kill you and rescue Sami. It sounds like she was the one thinking further ahead.” Sora turned to look at me.

“Oh, uh, right.” I might have stuttered just a bit before gathering up enough confidence to take a step forward and explain. “I need to get access to the engine room, then we all need to get to the hangar. But I’m not entirely sure where either of those are, plus there’s the issue with Sora’s core. You don’t have it, do you?”

“No, but I can feel it above us, and based on what I felt earlier, I’d say it’s a few decks below where I woke up.”

“It’s probably in the captain’s personal vault then, and if we’re going there anyway, we might as well pick up a few extra valuables on our way out.” Krom grinned, but Sora shook their head.

“We don’t have the time or storage space to go on a shopping spree. I’ll handle my core. Meanwhile, you two head to the engine room and then meet me in the hangar.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. Partially because I was concerned about Sora going alone, but mostly because not wanting to empty the captain’s vault was extremely out of character for them.

“I’m sure. Just stay safe and don’t leave without me.” Sora smiled before turning invisible and presumably walking off. I just shook my head at them.

“Do you two normally trust this easy?” Krom asked as he stared into the empty space where Sora had been.

“Three months ago, I would have said never, but things have changed recently. Besides, when Sora is involved, you need a bit of blind faith.” I turned back towards the orc with a half-smile. “So, where’s the engine room?”

“Not far, but we aren’t going to go directly there.” Krom turned around to pick up the binders before tossing them to me. “Put those on.” I glared at him without moving. “It’s in case we get caught, besides you already proved that they can’t hold you.”

“Alright fine, but if this is some sort of trick, then Sora is definitely going to kill you and I won’t even try to stop them this time.” I put the binders on my wrists, but made sure they weren’t locked.

“So much for blind faith, eh?” Krom smirked as he pushed his way past me.

“I have faith in Sora, not you.” I was struggling to keep up, and he wasn’t making any attempt to stay at my pace. “Besides, you should be thankful. I saved your life, remember?”

Krom snorted. “You saved Sora’s life, not mine. I still would’ve killed them, even if they had gotten the jump on me.”

“Sora killed your captain, remember?” I asked, feeling more than a little smug. “Do you really think you’re more capable than him?”

“Captain Leo was an overconfident idiot and deserved whatever he got. Hells, I’d bet my last credit that he was too busy thinking with his cock to defend himself. He wouldn’t have lost in a fair fight.”

We stopped in front of an elevator door, where Krom tapped on the display to summon it. I leaned against the wall and smiled up at him as I took a moment to catch my breath. “Doesn’t seem like much of an incentive for Sora to fight fair then, does it?”

“No, I guess it doesn’t.” He chuckled. “Still, I was winning until you got involved.”

“Just proves my point.” The door to the elevator opened, and I stepped in before turning around with a grin. “If you’re going to fight one of us, you better be able to kill us both.”

“You’re pretty cocky for a girl who spent all morning crying in a cell,” Krom commented as he followed me onto the elevator and selected the eighteenth floor.

“That was before I knew Sora was still alive. Besides, them suggesting that I go with you alone means that our plan is going to work and you won’t betray us.”

He was about to respond when the elevator came to a stop and the angry voice of a woman came through the intercom. “Captain Leo was found dead in his quarters and somebody helped a prisoner escape. If you see either of the kitsune siblings or Krom, kill them on sight.”

“What was that about your plan working?” Krom asked as he moved to the corner of the elevator and started pushing at the ceiling.

“This is just a minor setback.” I dropped the restraints that I was still ‘wearing’ and moved to the elevator display to push against a panel near the floor. This ship was just a knockoff of the Andromeda class seven super dreadnought, but I was hoping whoever had designed it kept close enough to the original that it had the same flaws built in.

I reached into the panel to tear out a handful of wires, which caused a burst of sparks before the elevator started moving again.

“What did you just do?”

“I removed the remote access to the elevator.” I closed the panel to contain the toxic smelling smoke that was trying to escape. “That should make it impossible for the navigator to access the controls, and since it’s no longer receiving the stop command, it’ll continue to the eighteenth floor. It’s a shit design, but works out in our favor this time.”

“Any chance you can do that with the rest of the ship?”

“Sure, I just need access to the navigator’s core, which is probably in engineering.” I let out a frustrated sigh. “But since the navigator can still see and hear us right now, they’re probably going to try to cut us off before we can get to it.”

“In that case, we’ll just have to be faster than them.” Krom moved to put himself between me and the door as he pulled a pistol from his belt. “Stay behind me and try to keep up.”

I nodded, and a few tense moments later, the door opened. I had half expected a rain of gunfire, but what we found instead had me even more concerned. It was eerily silent, and as we stepped into the hallway, I immediately understood why.

“Shit, it's sealed.” I sprinted the dozen or so meters through the utilitarian hall to the closed doors on the other side. “They’ve probably already started draining the atmosphere. We don’t have much time.”

I pried open the display to access the inner workings of the door. Simply pulling the wires out like I did on the elevator wouldn’t work here, since the doors weren’t nearly as isolated. I was going to have to find a different work around.

“Can we stop them from draining the air?” Krom asked, and I shook my head.

“Not from here. The navigator has full control over life support. The captain is probably the only person who could override it, and even he’d only be able to do that from the bridge.”

“Alright, new plan then.” Krom pulled me away from the panel and pointed back down the hall while pulling a thin white rope from a pouch on his belt. “Go stand over there and cover your eyes. This is going to be bright.”

“There’s no way you’re going to be able to cut your way through that door. It has to be at least a meter of durasteel.”

“Engineering is on the deck below us, and while the door might be durasteel, the floor sure as the hells isn’t.” He started arranging the rope in a circle near the base of the door while I moved a safe distance away. “Alright, here goes nothing.”

I turned away and covered my eyes, but could still see the intense white light from behind my closed eyelids. Meanwhile, Krom was laughing like a madman. “Oh, I’ve been wanting to use that one for a while now. You should be good to uncover your eyes. Just try not to breathe too much.”

I slowly uncovered my eyes and blinked away the spots before turning around to face the mad orc. “What was that?”

“Enchanted thermal rope. Burns through just about anything and it’s reusable to boot, just gotta wait for it to cool down.”

“That must’ve cost you a fortune.” I moved over to the newly formed hole to look down into it. As best as I could tell, it had cut through a maintenance access tunnel and continued to the level below. I could even hear a number of voices panicking on the other side. “Looks like we found engineering, but how do we get down there?”

The maintenance tunnel was only about two meters down, but the room below that had an impressively high ceiling, which made it a nearly ten meter drop from where we were standing.

“Here, hold this.” Krom handed me a pitch black feather, which I just kind of stared at in confusion.

“What is it?” Instead of acting like a sane person and explaining what the feather did, Krom decided to push me into the hole. I screamed all the way up until I felt my body sharply decelerate and safely float the last couple of meters to the ground.

My heart was racing as I landed and it took me a moment to realize that a pair of human men wearing coveralls were staring at me. I gingerly waved up at them. “Hey, sorry to, uh, drop in like this?”

Krom landed heavily to my left and shot them both before they could even reply. I scrambled to my feet and stomped over to poke him in the chest. “What the actual fuck? Next time, warn me before you push me to my death.”

“If I warned you, then you would have wasted time arguing.” He grabbed my wrist to stop me from poking him again. “Now, if you’re done complaining, then we are still in a hurry.”

“Fine, whatever, you look for the core while I deal with the reactor.” I tried to pull my wrist away, but Krom’s grip was iron tight.

“Where should I look to find the core?”

“Check by the main control center. It’s usually kept in a vault secured in the floor.” He didn’t release me after my explanation, which was starting to make me nervous. “Please, let go of my wrist.”

“Sorry, I was distracted.” Krom smiled down at me before very deliberately letting me go. The whole interaction made me feel uncomfortable. So, I quickly turned away without saying another word.

Engineering had been set up similarly to what we had back on the Fury, just scaled up to accommodate an antimatter reactor instead of a fusion generator. Which meant the center of the room was taken up by a black opaque cylinder surrounded by an immense number of corrugated pipes linking the rest of the ship’s primary systems to it.

The off-cycle oscillation was even more obvious from where I was standing now, and it was a miracle that the engineer in charge hadn’t already adjusted for it. All I needed to do was overclock the cycle speed a bit further, and everything would be set. So I grabbed a nearby wrench and got to work.