Lace’s gaze drifted down, and she holstered the impact driver into her tool harness. One of the oculi hissed a gasp as Lace unhooked her arm from the truss, then slid down two meters before hopping the rest of the way off.
She faced Adequin and saluted, fist to chest. “Sir.”
“Circitor.” Adequin greeted her with a nod, eyeing the pair of protective goggles nestled in Lace’s short silver hair, flecked with white ringlets. “Those go on your eyes,” Adequin said. “Last I checked.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Lace flashed a good-natured smile, her warm voice gravelly with age. “Hey, at least I had them on my person this time. Baby steps, sir.”
“Consider stepping a little faster. This ship’ll fall apart if you go blind.”
Lace nodded. “Yessir.”
Adequin eyed the partly dismantled service gantry. “That same gantry giving you trouble again?”
“Never not.” Lace grimaced, pulling off her grease-stained work gloves and tucking them under one arm. “Good to see you not at the ass-crack of dawn for once. Thanks for helping me out, by the way. Woulda taken me twice as long on my own. Though I’m still not sure how I feel about givin’ the EX orders.”
Adequin smiled. “Glad to help.”
“Did ya need somethin’， sir?”
“Just here to greet the Tempus.”
Lace glanced at the docking bay, its air-lock alarms still flashing. “They should nearly be done pressurizing; I’ll need to clear them for egress.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Adequin offered. “I know you’re probably chomping at the bit to get back to repairs…”
Lace’s faded brown eyes glinted with humor. “Thrilled, sir. Tell Bach he owes me a beer.”
“Will do.”
Lace returned to the gantry, and Adequin left, crossing the barren deck toward the bay entrance. She unlocked the controls beside the massive hatch doors just as the readout ticked down to the last percent. The screen flashed green, and she tapped in her clearance code.
The massive doors let out a hissing exhale, then bisected, pushing out a waft of cool, dry air. No matter what they did to try and fix it, the docking areas always remained a dozen or so degrees cooler than the rest of the ship.
Across the now-equalized bay sat the newly arrived, fifty-meter-long scouting frigate: the SCS Tempus, its polished aerasteel frame glinting silver in the harsh overhead lights. The blue glow of the quad ion engines faded, and the heat vents released a long, shrill purr before falling silent.
Adequin crossed the expanse of diamond-plated decking to the landing pad, one of six docking areas outlined with tattered, reflective demarcation tape. Crimson beacons lit on the underside of the ship and the hatch ramp lowered.
One by one, fifteen crew members disembarked, rucksacks thrown over their shoulders. Each one stopped to salute Adequin as they passed before disappearing into the main hangar. A few seconds after the last had left, Griffith Bach finally emerged.
Too tall to clear the squat door frame, the thick-muscled centurion ducked through the hatch and stepped off the Tempus. He hefted his pack onto his shoulder, and his silver and copper Imprint tattoos glinted along his bicep. His eyes landed on her and he smiled, his teeth a flash of white against his warm brown skin. Shades of gray sprinkled his trimmed beard, but he didn’t look a day older than when he’d left.
As the most centrally located Sentinel vessel, the Argus acted as home base for the crew responsible for maintaining the network of buoys comprising the Sentinel alert system. For the last six months, the Tempus had patrolled the “downward” expanse of the Legion-occupied section of the Divide, stopping along the way to make any needed repairs. However, the closer one got to the Divide, the faster one moved through time. The same phenomenon caused the unnerving flashes of the future when vessels drifted too close, like the Argus had earlier.