“What unit is that measured in?”
He let out a breathy laugh, but the humor fled his face in an instant.
“You said earlier he did great,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, well,” Jackin began, then shrugged. “He’s not half bad. But green as shit, I mean—the EVA thing? Come on.”
“I know, I know. But he’s learning. And fast.”
“Yeah,” Jackin agreed, leaning back in his seat. “Talk about a shitstorm. Ever think about blaming him? All this started when he showed up.”
Her brow creased in amused disbelief. “You think he brought the Divide with him?”
“Maybe not, but a whole pile of bad karma.”
“The point is,” Adequin said, steering them back on track, “if ripping the door off worked, we’ll rip the door off again. Or maybe Puck can hack it.”
Jackin held up one finger. “Small problem.”
“Go ahead.”
“We may have forcibly ejected ourselves from that air lock before it had a chance to seal and depressurize.”
“May have?”
“Did.”
She sighed. “Well, that’s not ideal. But the gate should have automatically sealed off that sector. We’ll just have to dock at the other set of air locks. Which side did you break?”
“Starboard.”
“Then we go in port.”
Minutes later, they decelerated out of warp speed, and Jackin flew them inward until Kharon Gate appeared on their long-range scanners. On the viewscreen, Adequin could just barely distinguish the tiny black shape the deserted gate carved out against the backdrop of endless stars.
“Huh.” Jackin slid open a few menus, then leaned closer to the interface. “Huh…”
“Jack.”
“Yeah, sorry.” He slid the scanner display to overlay on the viewscreen, then spread his hands to enlarge it to full width. The orange holographic map showed a wide, gridded expanse, with a single, long, narrow blip on the farthest edge.
“I’m not seeing anything other than the gate itself,” Jackin said. “No other ships. I think they left.”
Adequin nodded. “It’d be just like Drudgers to get bored and leave. Let’s head in. Dock port.”
“Okay, boss. But if the doors on starboard were bugged, port might be as well. They could be headed back shortly after we dock.”
She shrugged. “We can be sitting ducks here, on a ship with no armaments, or sitting ducks in the station, where we can mount a defense.”
“Fair point.” Jackin swept open the interface and typed in a command. The ship rumbled as the ion engines roared to life, and they sped toward Kharon Gate.
* * *
A few minutes later, they were docked. Adequin disembarked first, welcomed to the P1 primary air lock by blaring sirens and flashing emergency lights. From the control screen, Puck both quelled the station-wide alarm and opened the air lock—without the need to liberate the door from its track.
Jackin thoroughly checked both the primary and secondary doors, but found no device like the one they’d found on the starboard side.
The rest of the crew unloaded into the main corridor. When they were all gathered, Adequin reluctantly made her way up the ramp leading deeper into the station, then turned to face them.
“Listen up,” she said. They fell silent and turned to look at her. “We have reason to believe there could be a Drudger ship incoming to this location.”