"Sorry, just taking the situation in," Victor replied as he handed his rifle off to another soldier and unholstered his side arm. He tucked his handgun into the back of his belt then stepped into Alaka's waiting hands and was boosted up to the narrow service shaft entrance at an alarming speed. He didn't get his arms up in time and had to wriggle in head and shoulders first.
In the narrow dark passage he could hear Ayan ahead, but without the enhanced vision of his visor he wouldn't have been able to see her. She had gotten several meters ahead and was already at the point where the shaft widened.
He couldn't help but feel as though the station was pressing down on him, however. When he moved his shoulders to wriggle ahead his shoulder blades grazed the top of the shaft. It felt as though he was crawling through a long, shallow coffin. Panic threatened to grip him as he tried to get his hands up in front of him but failed.
"Are you all right Victor? Your stats are climbing," Ayan called back.
"I'll be fine as soon as I catch up." He redoubled his efforts and pushed ahead, using his knees, chest and feet to push his way along the shaft. Finally he came to the portion of the shaft where it widened and got his hands in front. Victor sighed in relief as he squeezed in beside Ayan, making sure she still had enough space to work in.
She had fine tools out and was just finishing bridging two wires with a clamp. "Now that the station has power in these sections, we can force doors open by powering their locks manually."
"Maybe you can. I'm not exactly a tech."
"This is the easy stuff. I bet I could teach you how to get past most locking mechanisms in an afternoon. The challenging part is finding a way to get at the wiring." A pair of wires sparked and something in the bulkhead in front of them clicked. "Bloody hell," she muttered. "The bolt drew back, but I have to hotwire the hatch so it'll move."
"This is the hatch here?" Victor pressed against the metal plate between them.
"Yes, but it's on a rail that won't move without the motor."
"Where do you see that?" Victor asked, looking around.
Ayan reached up and pushed her fingers into a narrow crack. "You can feel the rail right here." She withdrew them and went back to carefully tracing wires, figuring out what each was attached to.
Victor almost confirmed for himself but stopped. "Oh, I believe you, I just-" he shrugged.
"Haven't been in many maintenance corridors?" Ayan smirked. He couldn't see it, but he could hear it well enough, especially with her light Britannia accent.
"I wouldn't call this a corridor. Tunnel fighting could be a bit like this, but there's normally more breathing room. Completely different if you ask me, except for the claustrophobia."
"You did tunnel fighting even though you're claustrophobic? That's well beyond the call."
"Well, it was either go with Alaka into the tunnels or fight in the open where we made half the progress and lost twice as many people."
"I remember. Pandem was bad for everyone. I had to hang upside down over a docking pit with nothing but my wits and a vacsuit. My fear of heights nearly did me in."
"You're a starship engineer and you're afraid of heights? What do you do for space walks?"
"You're a trained soldier with claustrophobia," Ayan retorted with a rueful chuckle.
"Good point."
Ayan worked in silence as Victor watched her strand different uncut wires together while tugging others to the side. "Actually, I don't know."
"Don't know?"
"What I'd do for space walks. It hasn't come up since I realized I was afraid of heights again. I was hoping I'd be all right on a space walk, but as you know that's rarely the case."
"I suppose you'll find out when they install the new engine pods."
"I was hoping to give it a go well before that, but from the way things are going, you might be right. Not like I should supervise that sort of thing from a distance."
"Most senior starship engineers would, from what I've seen on past tours."
"Well, I'm not most engineers. I supervised the build on those engine pods, I'd rather see they get installed properly." Ayan cut four wires, stripped the insulation off and pinched them together. Her Vacsuit protected her from the raw current as a loud crack sounded. The small, thick hatch was drawn aside swiftly, giving them a clear way into one of the station's comm rooms. "You go first. I'll make sure these don't come loose."
The sound of the motor clicking and whining as it continued to run, stripping its gears with the door as far along the track as it could go was loudest as Victor pushed his shoulders through the opening. There was no graceful way down.
Once most of his torso was hanging in the open air above the communications room he let himself fall past the nearest console. With a violent crash he narrowly missed a chair on wheels, sending it spinning across the room as he fell face first on the floor. The vacsuit's armour and inertial dampening systems kept him from physical harm, but his pride was a little injured as he listened to Ayan burst out laughing. "Three point five!" she called after him.
With him out of the way, and her lesser size, she had just enough room to turn around before lowering herself down feet first.
He stood and moved to the deactivated console she was slowly lowering herself down to. Victor could see her feet feeling in the air for the top of the console so she could carefully step down and put his hand reassuringly on her leg. "I'll catch you, just drop out."
She pushed off more quickly and he caught her perfectly in his arms. Even through the overlapping slats of the vacsuit armour she felt much more feminine than she looked.
"You don't weigh a thing, my suit didn't even kick in."
"Flatterer," Ayan waited a moment then kicked her feet a little. "Ahem,"
He stepped away from the console and gently put her down.
"Thank you."
Her gaze scanned across the dimly lit oval room. In the centre was an island with six chairs, the walls were covered with two dimensional displays and seating. It was a long counter top, broken by two inset track doors. "Do you see anything that's displaying something?" she asked quietly, beginning a slow walk along the oval room.
Vincent did the same in the other direction and then it struck him. There was nothing he understood on the screens, nothing coming out of any of the older holographic projectors. He traced one of the circular emitters with his finger and snickered softly.
"See something?" she asked.
"No, sorry. These holographic displays are ancient. My sister and I saved our allowance for three months when we were kids so we could get one for the rear cabin of the family cruiser. She'd have a laugh at seeing one being used in a room like this."
Ayan didn't reply, she kept inspecting the control panels, what she was looking for exactly, he couldn't tell.
"She made it off Pandem with her husband after the bots went homicidal."
Ayan looked at him, mild relief plain on her face. "Oh, I forgot transports escaped that mess."
"A few dozen. Some of us old soldiers were able to help the police get them away from Damshir early on. The first time we got control."
"I never heard what exactly happened during the early days of the virus."
"Well, most of the Andies, that's the police androids, managed to resist long enough for deactivation. Then something reactivated them while most of the police force was inside the Mount Elbrus police station. A few of us retired military types ran into Alaka and we got more organized. Then the real fight began."
"I'm sorry."
They were walking in a slow circle, inspecting the screens closely. There was nothing to see, even Victor could see most of the computers were stuck in a diagnostic loop or frozen altogether. "Don't know why you're apologizing. Even Alaka said without you people we may not have made it off Pandem."