Her chest tightened. “What is it?”
His response came as a curt nod over his shoulder, indicating she should follow. They headed down the hall, then took a lift down into the belly of the ship. The door slid open, revealing a large cargo area packed haphazardly with crates. A few soldiers stood around taking inventory.
Adequin stepped out of the lift to follow Puck, who entered the maze of crates and pallets and led her to the far side of the expansive area.
“We’ve found all kinds of shit down here so far,” Puck explained. “Weird shit. There’s cases upon cases of chemicals, metamaterials, a half dozen slabs of raw aerasteel, some metals and alloys I don’t even know the names of. It’s like a chem lab down here.”
“For what? Explosives?”
Puck shook his head. “No idea. There’s no casings or detonators, at least that we’ve found so far. Just a lot of raw materials.”
She chewed her lip. This was not what he’d brought her down to show her. “What else?”
Puck sighed. “Well, other than loads, and I mean loads of Viator tech, these guys also have loads of, well…”
He stopped at an open bay door that led into a secondary hold. The space sat packed wall-to-wall with Legion-issue equipment and supplies.
Adequin stared at it for a few seconds, then looked up at Puck with a furrowed brow. “Where’d they get all this?”
“I wondered the same thing.” Puck walked over to a stack of crates that had been secured to the floor with a taut canvas tarp. He lifted the cover up. Brandished across the side of the crate was the Sentinel logo above the words “SCS Tempus.”
Adequin’s heart stopped briefly, then slammed hard against her chest to catch back up. She swallowed and stepped forward, running her fingers along the etched words. Its sharp edges were cold and solid. It was real. Not an illusion.
Heat crept up her neck, but she steadied her voice and focused all her efforts on remaining calm.
“Puck.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get the coordinates from the ship’s logs. I want their last location.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Adequin stood at the helm of the Drudgers’ ship, stared at the blank viewscreen, and waited.
They’d been at warp speed for almost thirty minutes and would be decelerating shortly to land at the coordinates they’d found in the logs of the ship—named after a Viator term that roughly translated to Synthesis. They were headed straight back outward, which was such a bad idea, not to mention irrational and reckless. But she couldn’t find a way to care.
It might have been a long shot, but it didn’t matter. They’d lost too many aboard the Argus; she had to know she’d done all she could to find the Tempus. And if it wasn’t enough to risk it for her own reasons, she found plenty of justification in doing it for Lace’s sake. It’d been her final request, and Lace was the closest thing Griffith had to family. Adequin had to do whatever it took to honor that, or she’d never be able to forgive herself.
Jackin sat harnessed in the ratty copilot’s chair, throwing anxious glances at her while the kilometers ticked by on the main display. He’d insisted on coming, and she’d been too panicked to argue. He’d set Puck to take over his task of figuring out how to restart the gate, then grabbed Erandus, Warner, and two other oculi while following Adequin to the air lock.
She hadn’t wanted to endanger anyone but herself for this admittedly rogue mission, but Jackin hadn’t given her a choice. Though they didn’t need more than two to adequately fly the ship, she knew she’d be glad for the extra bodies if they ran into another enemy vessel on the way.
The deck rumbled lightly as they decelerated from warp with a flash of light. An outward sea of absolute black welcomed them on the viewscreen.