Gum-chomping pulled him from his thoughts, and he refocused through his protective glasses onto Emery as she stared at the impressively bright light.
“Don’t look directly at the arc,” he grumbled.
Emery pulled her eyes away and gave him a mellow grin.
Apparently, she had been a “trusted laboratory technician” of Mesa’s a few times in the past. Though her suggestions of the various ways in which they could attempt to destroy the object had been creative, they had not been precisely productive. Not that Cavalon had managed to offer anything useful himself. This was his strategy, after all. Frying it with a plasma torch.
He zapped every facet of the pyramid with the tool, dragging it along every etching and groove, but nothing happened. Whatever material it was made from didn’t react to the twenty-eight thousand degrees of hot plasma arcing into it. Didn’t even leave a mark.
He set down the tool and sighed, pulling off his glasses and gloves. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, meeting Mesa’s gaze across the wide table they’d set up in the middle of the makeshift medbay.
“What about biometrics?” Cavalon asked.
Mesa pinched her lips together. “Viators disfavored that manner of security, though it is possible. It would most likely be regulated to a single user, if that were the case.”
“Then we should cut off the hand of the Drudger captain,” he said with feigned cheer. “Try that on for size.”
Emery leaned forward. “Except the EX just took the Drudger ship to void-only-knows-where. Think she’s abandoning us?”
“I assure you,” Mesa said, “she is not abandoning us. Please focus, Miss Flos.”
Emery shrugged and leaned back in her chair, chomping her gum.
“They did remove the corpses before they left,” Mesa said. “Though I am not sure if they have ejected them out the air lock yet. So, that may yet be a possibility.”
Cavalon took his knife from the sheath and held it up along with the palm of his other hand. “What about a blood sacrifice?”
Mesa frowned. “Even if it was biometrics, it certainly would not be your biometrics,” she said, scorn evident in her tone. Then her scowl faded, and she licked her lips and slid to the edge of her chair. She pulled the pyramid toward her, then snatched the knife from Cavalon’s grip and dragged the blade along the palm of her hand.
“Mesa!” His eyes went wide and he sat up straight. “I was kidding!”
She glared at the pyramid ruefully as her blood dripped down onto its peak. “No marked change,” she murmured.
Cavalon’s chair groaned against the metal floor as he stood. He grabbed a biotool and a pack of gauze from the crates of medical supplies along the walls.
Mesa continued to turn the pyramid over in one hand as Cavalon took her injured hand and held it flat. He disinfected it, then switched to cauterization mode and closed the small slice. Mesa winced, but her focus remained on the pyramid. Within seconds, the wound had fully sealed over with new, pink skin. The nanite-enhanced cauterization would leave no scar.
Emery grinned up at him, leaning her chair onto its back legs, arms crossed. “Know your way around a biotool too? You get more and more useful every time I turn around.”
Cavalon eyed her, certain any second she would tip over in her chair and ensure he’d be tending to her foolish injuries next. He wiped the rest of Mesa’s blood off her hand with the gauze. “I was pre-med for about ten seconds before August—” He shook his head. “Before I switched to genetic engineering.”
“I think you may be correct,” Mesa said with a light sigh.
“Correct about what?” He tossed the bloody gauze in an incinerator chute on the wall, then returned to stand across the table from her.