A din of blaring alarms buried the remainder of his words. Adequin grimaced at the piercing clang, then a sudden movement caught her eye. On her desk, the rings of the golden astrolabe spun wildly. It tilted slowly before spilling off the side of the desk as if knocked by some unfelt gust of wind.
“What the hell was that?” Puck called over the din of alarms.
Adequin shuddered and a sharp tingle rushed up her spine. She stumbled to catch her footing as the decking swelled and shifted, like a retreating wave pulling the sand from beneath her feet.
A surge of vertigo spun her vision, and the floor dropped. Her Imprints sped across her skin, rushing to protect her. Her shielded elbows and knees hit hard, the pain deadened as if the floor had been covered with thick carpet. The room bucked and swayed once more before settling still again.
Adequin’s pulse hammered in her throat as she righted herself. Instead of returning to their default location, her Imprints fanned out, buzzing and clicking to take up a long-unused combat formation along the backs of her limbs, up her spine, wrapping around her abdomen.
A few meters away, Puck winced and shook out a wrist as he stood. Mesa picked herself up in an alarmingly dignified manner, waving off Puck’s offer of assistance.
Adequin met Mesa’s worry-lined eyes for a heartbeat before the floor vibrated again, sliding beneath her feet like a receding tide. The nape of Adequin’s neck tingled sharply and her skin hummed, every hair on her body standing on end.
A rushing hiss drew her attention to the door, which unsealed of its own accord, locking into the open position. The blaring alarms shifted to a new, staccato rhythm, shrieking in sync with the pulsing crimson and blue beacon above the doorway—the alert to take up battle stations.
A burst of hard-edged white light flooded the outside corridor. Adequin and Puck rushed out, Mesa following in their wake.
Adequin jogged down the hall and around the corner toward a mid-sector bulkhead. At the farthest end of the long corridor, a blinding glint of sharp white light reflected off the decking and walls and ceilings, forking like bolts of lightning igniting across the metal. She gaped at the strange display until a sliver of movement caught her eye.
A ways down the long corridor, Bray rounded a corner and raced toward them, another man trailing a few meters behind. It took her a moment to recognize the other soldier, a stocky man with a mess of unkempt red hair whose duty vest hung open, unstrapped. Aller Erandus—a “problem circitor” who’d been dumped on her a year ago by the aging commander of the Typhos. She’d put him in Damage Control to try and give him some focus. Though incidents were rare, keeping a two-hundred-year-old dreadnought up to safety codes proved a literally endless task.
Bray and Erandus sprinted through the bulkhead door frame as if it were some kind of finish line. Erandus had already opened his nexus and touched it to the control screen to establish a local connection. Adequin dashed forward to intercept, but arrived too late. The massive bulkhead door blared a single warning, then roared shut.
“What are you doing?” she snapped. The door hissed and the control screen sounded an affirmative tone as the seal pressurized. “This is the only throughway to the bridge.” And the fastest way to the mess—where she’d just sent over thirty soldiers to cool off. Thirty soldiers who were now trapped in the port bow of the ship.
Erandus turned his pallid, sweat-glistened grimace onto her. “Sorry, sir,” he growled. “But there’s no bridge anymore.”
Bray pushed out a sharp breath and paced from the sealed door. Adequin gripped his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. “Oculus…”
Bray’s look snapped to her, his invariably neat, slicked-back black hair a disheveled mess, the usual steadfastness in his gray eyes overtaken by a haunted, glassy expression.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“No idea,” Erandus answered, marching away from the control screen. “Before the network crashed, the damage-control system said half the port bow’s breached, but it happened damn fast. Whoever’s shootin’ at us must have some kinda new tech.”