I glare at him over my shoulder. “It’ll do what I need it to.” I could explain but if he decides to take off again, I don’t want him blabbing to Max or the security teams.
I turn my attention back to Kane. “The dampeners,” I say. “How do I turn them off?”
But Kane just stares at me, through me.
Shit. Okay. I can do this. It can’t be that hard.
I cross the bridge to the screen where Nysus showed us the dampeners redlining and the unexplained 10 percent energy drain.
But staring at the array of options and abbreviations on the screen, I curse Verux—and not for the first time—for keeping us in our expertise silos. I can run the basics on the LINA but more from training and rote memory. Not from understanding the actual tech or engine. That was Nysus and Voller and Kane.
And I don’t want to start up the wrong system, press the wrong button, and accidentally turn the lights back on or set off some kind of alarm.
Reed arrives to manage over my left shoulder. “It’s that one,” he says, pointing at an icon that saysENG MAN.
“You have no idea,” I say, resisting the urge to simply press the button based on the confidence in his tone.
He scoffs at me. “Engine maintenance. What else could it be?”
I stare at him. “I don’t know, spelled correctly?”
It takes him a second, then he gets it. “It’s an abbreviation,” Reed says with defensive bluster. “The point is to leave letters out.”
Ignoring him, I let out a slow breath and try to hold fast to my patience, try to ignore the feeling of seconds ticking down on a timer that I cannot see.
Eventually I find a menu markedDIAGand work my way throughuntil I find the screen with the dampener information. They are indeed operating above the upper lines of the graph, showing where Nysus worked his magic.
Then I find an indication of a menu for the dampeners themselves. And thank God, on the second submenu of that menu, is simply an option forOFF.
I press it, and the effect is instantaneous. The idling engines rumble noticeably beneath my feet, sending little waves of vibrations up through my soles.
But it’s more than that, too. Dread, like a heavy, suffocating blanket, descends upon me, pressing against my chest and making it harder to breathe.
My heart flutters rapidly, as if it’s trying to escape.
Movement at the corner of my eye catches my attention, and I turn abruptly toward the rear of the bridge, even though I know better.
There’s nothing there.
At least, not at first.
But the longer I stare into the darkness, beyond our failing work light and the dim glow of the control panels, shapes emerge. Until they’re just as bright and visible as they must have been in life.
Captain Linden Gerard staggers backward toward the hall, her expression one of shock and fury, a crimson splotch growing on her chest. She doesn’t quite fall, though, bobbing in the air instead.
The gravity is shutting down. The environmentals have been turned off.
Instinctively, I reach for the edge of the control boards behind me to keep my balance. But I don’t feel the gravity going slack—a sensation like someone cutting a cord between you and the other person in a continuous game of tug-of-war.
The other shape, a man with his back to me, grabs Gerard’s arm and pulls her off the bridge, half walking, half pushing off the floor to glide through the air. Likely Cage Wallace, the first officer. Verux’s man on the inside.
What was Gerard in here to do? To set off the distress beacon? Someone certainly had.
A moment later, a gunshot, thin and echoey, sounds. I jump, startled. “Oh God.”
Blowback, blood and brain matter, sprays in a fine mist through the open doorway.
Then semidarkness returns suddenly to the bridge, and I blink several times, trying to see more.
