Reaching the far-right side, he quickly found the panel he was looking for and shut his thrusters off as he came up alongside it. Ender pulled his multipurpose tool from his belt, along with the small drive disk he’d brought with him. With the tool, he pried off the security door to the right of the panel, revealing a number pad, a few thin drive slots, and a light indicator alerting him that it was armed and locked, along with a manual keyhole override.
Dropping his tool, he let the tether attached to it tug it back into place on his belt as he inserted the drive into the first slot. Within seconds, the light indicator changed from red to green, as the drive held a pre-programmed system override that instantly disabled the panel alarms, while tricking the system, and whoever happened to look, into thinking that nothing had changed.
Sliding back the now unlocked side panel, Ender pulled himself inside. He found he had to wiggle a bit to fit, but soon enough, he was squeezed in, surrounded by chrome walls on all sides.
Oh, thank fuck spacesuits weren’t as bulky as they used to be, he thought with a sigh. There was still some heft to them, but not like they once were.
Still in zero gravity, Ender pulled himself as quietly as possible through the vent. Eventually, his path widened a bit. Not enough to stand, but enough that going forward took little effort.
Stopping his forward momentum when he found an airlock plate, he snorted on realizing that while the bastards had locked the outside of the ship, they hadn’t bothered securing further, even though doing so would have been as simple as pressing a button. Not only was the lock off, there wasn’t even an alarm set up to send out an alert when it was opened. Both light indicators near the door were set to green.
Pushing the button nearest the lights, there was a whooshing sound as the circular plate opened, and both air and gravity met the nothing on the other side.
Quickly crawling past, he shut the panel behind him. No longer floating, now that he was finally in a pressurized and gravity-stable environment with breathable air, Ender typed in the code on the rectangular panel on his suit to release his helmet, automatically turning off the stealth mode on hisspacesuit. Taking a deep breath of stagnant ship air as the helmet folded back and slid inside the collar of his spacesuit, Ender shook his hair out a bit, before tugging a tie from his pocket and pulling it up.
“That’s better,” he hummed.
On his hands and knees, Ender started crawling towards where he knew there would be a room to drop down into.
He was only a long hallway away from his destination when the alarms started going off. At the first blaring electric scream, he paused, listening as the sound of running feet began, and then grew louder.
“How the fuck did they get out?!” a man growled, as he ran down the hall right below him.
“How do you think?! That dumbass Carl was watching!” whoever was with the man snapped.
As soon as they were out of range, Ender tsked. “That would be the pretty Siren escaping.”
He crawled forward swiftly, taking a right. As he reached his destination, Ender paused briefly above the room to make sure no one was below, before balling up and kicking through the ceiling panel. The screeching sound of breaking metal was beautifully covered up by all of the screaming alarms.
Ender dropped down lightly on his feet, into what appeared to be a storage room, with encased clear shelves full of what looked to be dusty as shit cleaning supplies. Staring at what had to be a half an inch thick layer of dust, he hesitated as he thought about just how filthy the place no doubt was. Ender was used to dirt, used to filth even. He’d lived on a farm before, and he had a shit-ton of chickens, but…mm dust. He fucking hated dust.
Sighing, he stripped off his black baggy spacesuit, but found he had to tug a bit to get the custom boot covers off his cowboy boots. It was still better than being forced to wear athletic shoes—ew.
Quickly detaching the collar of the suit, Ender put it back on, before attaching the small, two-inch wide by one-inch square mini air unit to the back of his neck. Just in case shit went sideways and he found himself needing his helmet and air.
Removing the tether that was still connected to the Red Herring, he tossed the line up into the ceiling, before hiding his suit in the only cabinet in the room that wasn’t see-through.
Ender was setting his brown Stetson on his head, from where it’d been hanging around his neck, when the ship violently rocked, the sound of an explosion coming from somewhere else on the ship.
Smirking, he chuckled as more alarms went off. “And that would be my people—the trigger-happy fucks.”
Due to it being his only option, since using bullets on a spaceship was just asking for dumb shit to go wrong, Ender pulled out the silver and brown handled laser gun that mimicked his favorite old western weapon, the Colt Single Action Army Revolver, before peeking out the door. The screaming had started up already. His gaze flicked left and right down the hall as he stood there trying to think on the most likely path the Siren would take, before deciding…fuck it! Why think at all?!
Taking off at a run to the left, Ender just let the annoying fucking urge that wasn’t his own guide him.
Killian watchedthe others fighting only a short distance away from him. He was doing his best to keep an eye on all of that, but also on the horde of children he was trying to protect.In an attempt to shield them from as much of the violence as he possibly could, he currently had them corralled into a side room.
Killian was seriously regretting deciding to follow. This was really not a safe place for them to be running around, and it would have been wiser of him to stay back with the children in the outer holding cell room.
If he could just get them to the bridge, he could seal himself and them inside while the fighting continued… Which had been the original plan, and technically still was. But more and more of the other captives kept going off on their own. The numbers between them and the traffickers were worryingly dwindling, as many of the assholes seemed to have completely forgotten about the plan and the children.
As Killian noticed another person about to sprint after someone, he lunged forward and dragged the man back.
The Cryptid spun in his hold, his fists raised, stopping mid swing the second he realized who he was.
“I need you to remind everyone that we have a plan, and a whole pod of children to protect!” he hissed thickly, his voice carrying to the others as he saw them shiver with the power he laced through it. Killian may not have access to the full power of his voice, but he still had some.
The man swallowed and nodded, before jumping back into the fight.
