Vytln laughed. He actually laughed. Holding his belly like he was trying to keep it from moving to spare himself some pain.
“Haven,” he gave her a sweet look. “They came after us. They brought this on themselves. They might even consider revenge for this. No. We remove this threat. We end it completely. We make sure that anyone connected to them knows better than to come after us. And my family prizes money over everything. We need to destroy the ship too. Make it far too costly for them to come after us, and they never will again.”
“Oh!” Haven perked up. “Then, that’s being easy! Here I was worrying how we were going to being careful about this.”
“Careful?” Vytln chuckled, bringing up his helmet. “We’re not careful, Haven. We’re a hazard. It’s their own fault for not recognizing our caution signs.”
She beamed and slid her own helmet on her head. They sealed into place and, with a few quick commands, connected to each other for comms while blocking everyone else out.
“Let’s go,” Haven smiled at him through the glass. “I already having the evac pods locked in, so they can’t get out. We can set the engine to overload, disharmonize the subspace generator, get out of here, and blow it all up.”
“Just as they did us,” he inclined his head. “I like the way you think.”
Laughing, Haven ran towards the door. She couldn’t sneak back into walls. For as comfortable as she found them, she knew that Vytln would not be able to fit. Especially not injured as he was now. They had to stick to the main halls.
But she’d already taken that into consideration.
The door opened as they approached, but the guards were gone.
“Where is everyone?” Vytln asked, limping after her. He was carrying the very same hammer that Kldyn had been using to beat him.
Haven looked around, trying to orient herself. It was a bit different navigating in the halls than the walls – she was honestly more used to navigating in the walls.
“Probably trying to going to the evac pods,” she said, consulting the tablet on her arm. “I keep setting off hull breach alarms.”
“You’re breaching the hull with your termites?”
“No. Well, not anymore. I was opening a lot of the exterior doors, but they are keeping reversing it. But I’m setting off the alarms still. And most people are being too cautious to risking it. Except the engineers. They’re trying to fixing it.”
“Do you have a plan?”
Haven smiled. “Yes. We needing to take over the bridge. We can getting the nav data, overload the engine data, and take the deck crew evac pod.”
“Good plan,” Vytln said. “I know this ship. The bridge is that way. I don’t know that I’ll be able to fight more than one or two people, though. How are we going to take over the bridge?”
“Catastrophically,” Haven laughed evilly, holding up her metal cutter.
Chapter 49
Vytln
Beautiful. An absolutely beautiful menace.
If Vytln hadn’t been in love with Haven before, he would have fallen for her now. Watching her work, doing her best pestering, was like watching an artist at work. He could only offer his body and what little remained of his strength – which wasn’t much and was fading fast. But she didn't need him to cause problems for people. She was trouble all on her own.
Right outside of the viewing room, she used him to climb up into the ceiling. He didn't see what she did, but it set off the alarms yet again. And, just like before, they only rang for a moment before her termites, wherever they were, silenced them.
She came down then and led him away. She did the same thing at two more spots in the ceiling before she called out.
“Gotting it!”
“What did you get?” Vytln asked, looking at the foot he could see poking out of the hole she’d knocked out of the ceiling. Soft tile covered the hard metal so it looked nicer, and it created a small space that, normally, a lvtl wouldn’t be able to climb in.Not just because it was too small, but because those soft ceiling tiles wouldn’t hold their weight.
But Haven fit comfortably and, spreading out her weight, she could stay up there without a problem.
“I am close enough for my termites to getting to the ship’s nanobot main center.”
The nanobot center? “Okay. And what does that mean?”
