The young shol was full of fire and determination. I didn't doubt he would throw himself against any threat if he thought it would help his situation. He was reckless, but if he stayed alive long enough, he would surely be a great leader with such passion to keep his crew safe.
He was already better than me. My whole leadership was designed to sacrifice myself and my crew for the sake of saving future crews from this very situation.
"Lead the way, small fire starter."
"I'll light your tail on fire as I cut it from your ass if you fuck us over," Vareo threatened.
"Your original threat was enough motivation," I deadpanned, thinking of my treasure still recovering in a medtank.
"Make your way to the West entrance, towards sector Pal. There is a utility hatch in the guard station that only opens when both sides are unlocked. You'll open it on your end, and if you pass the scan from the guard station, then I'll let you out."
"I haven't been exposed for as long as the rest of the crew in this sector," I pointed out the fact that the scan would mean nothing.
"Even if you're fucked, if the scan can't detect it, then we have enough time to get what we need and return. If you care about your mate, then you'll help me, and come back to be scanned again."
I nodded. "True enough." He's already heard my conversations with My Treasure to know I've bonded, and his species had a strong mate bond that his youth would sway his logic enough to believe others held the same connection with their own mates. I would have to remedy that belief after we retrieved the reserve stores of the Ganpan-Fal. He wasn't wrong about what I would do for my mate, but there were plenty of my species that would not do the same.
I reached the guard station relatively easily with the help of the young Shol that redirected his crew that held respect for him over the intercom ahead of my arrival.
"If you don't mind my curiosity, how are you doing this without Lord Zorn's interference?"
"He disabled his own access to this sector the moment he considered it lost. He may be ruthless, but he doesn't want to watch his crew die, even if he was the one to order it. He'll simply monitor the sensors as they go dark from being incinerated. Lucky for you, one of our best security commanders was on his rounds and got stuck in that sector. He doesn't want to be incinerated, and he believes I can do what I said I could."
"What exactly did you promise him?"
"That I've seen a beast with the sickness be cured with the supplies from the trill ship in port, and I'm the best bandit around. No one will approach the sector to verify beyond the sensors for at least a full red-star, and until then, Klaundis will systematically trigger the sensors and then disable them. We'll have the time to get your cure and allow it time to work before evacuating the sector onto shuttles for them to disappear. Then we'll burn the whole sector and no one will be the wiser."
"For a spawn, you have thought this through."
"Fuck you," he lashed out, knowing that I had not expected him to be so prepared. "I may not be mating age, but my species takes over a hundred cycles to mate because we only bond once in a lifetime. Since my species was destroyed, my ability to mate is a useless marker of my maturity. I'm probably older than you, lizard."
"Ah, are you already fifty cycles?"
"Fuck you," he spat again, making me grin. That was a 'no'.
The scan in the guard's room beeped and flashed red. I sighed in relief. Red was good.
"You're clear," he grumbled. "Go open the hatch. It's hidden behind the wall panel. Just lean into it until it clicks."
Following his instruction, I was able to locate the manual seal he spoke of. It required me to release a pressure sensor deadlock. It was not designed for creatures with only three fingers. With a sigh, I angled myself to use both my hands to place pressure in the grooves, attempting to move the locking mechanism. Due to the separation of my thumb from my other two fingers, I had to apply both my hands and then even my tail had to wrap around the grooves to prove I had full intention of opening the hatch.
Who designed this ship? Who had that many fingers?
"Good, you found the glove. It's moving on my side," Vareo grunted.
The glove? I refused to admit to this spawn that I hadn't looked for a device to help other species open the hatch. I was willing to break this vessel through brute force.
"This hatch is fucking thick," he said with a strain that I felt myself as my arms flexed to move the weight of the wheel.
The next forced tug on the hatch finally moved the gears enough to hear the wheeze of released air pressure between the sectors. The force of it swung the hatch open, and I realized that it wasn't merely thicker. The crawl space was surrounded by a volatile compound that, if it combined with a certain rock, was highly corrosive.
Vareo was on the other side, watching me stare at the inside of the hatch.
"Lord Zorn doesn't mess around. If you try to break free of the sector without help from the other side, it would burn you alive and destroy the hatch in the same action. Some have used their strength to tear through hatches before. They didn't make it to rip open the other side."
The force of the pressure releasing made the hatch swing out. My face was covered in the spray of the jelly inside. If we activated the trigger for the rock dust that made this jelly turn to acid, then I'd have been liquified on contact.
I quickly made my way through and quickly closed the hatch before asking, "What about the hatch on the other side?"
