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Loka smiled. His human was so smart. “It could work. If we put a piece of viral code in the system, it will infect the program and prevent it from doing more damage.”

“Or we will make it worse and take us all out,” Ivy said.

“Ignore her,” Heather said. “Ivy likes to see the dark side of things.”

“I’m a realist.”

Heather waved a hand in the air. “The Banti must be using a trojan. They’ve snuck in through a back door and gained control of our system.”

“We can use the same method,” Hoan said. “We insert our own trojan. It will chase down theirs.”

Loka stroked a horn. “It’s risky.” He moved to a dark screen and prodded it to try to bring it to life. It remained unresponsive. “The trojan code will need careful monitoring. As your friend over there said, it could do more damage than good.”

Ivy smirked as she inspected her nails. “I knew I was right.”

“If we keep a close eye on it, only let it into certain parts of the system, we can control it. We can stop it from doing damage. All we need to do is get the main station’s systems under our control again.”

“Is it me, or is the air in here a little off?” Hoan leaned against the side of the control desk.

“It’s not you,” Heather said. “The air filtration system is down. Every breath you take will be a little more toxic than the last. We’ve got about two hours of breathable air. Then it’s lights out.”

“Where is the engineering crew?”

“Missing. Assumed taken by the aliens.”

Hoan groaned. “This is not good.”

“We must assess the damage.” Loka finally accessed the panel in front of him, the light glowing a dull, sickly green. He ran a quick check on the systems. Air filtration was down, communications down, water and food supplies offline. All major systems had been damaged. Heather’s estimate of two hours was on the generous side.

“Are the Banti controlling the station’s navigation?” Hoan asked, rubbing his eyes and yawning as he did so.

“Everything is stable for now,” Heather said. “Once they have what they want—”

“You mean us served on a platter with a side of fries,” Ivy said.

Heather nodded. “Then I reckon they’ll unleash the code everywhere. They won’t care what happens to the station.”

“The Council of Representatives won’t be so understanding,” Nell said.

Ivy tutted. “As if they care about one outpost. They’re probably in on this.”

Loka glanced at Ivy before returning his attention to Heather. “How many Banti are still on board?”

Heather tapped the screen several times before it activated. “My hack is still ropey. The connections keep dying, but I got into the tracking system. There are two ships in the docking bay unaccounted for. There are a dozen crew assigned to each ship. And then, of course, they have control of the cyborgs.” Her expression grew pensive.

“How many?”

“The station has over five hundred, not all human-sized. Some are large spider-sized, like Ernie, but they can creep in anywhere.”

“That’s our focus,” Loka said. “Deactivate the cyborgs first.”

“This is the rogue code.” Heather dragged her fingers across the screen and pulled up rows of data. “You see here. It’s issuing commands to the cyborg station crew.”

“The Banti must be operating this code from somewhere inside the station,” Nell said. “There are no ships in orbit unless they’re cloaked.”

“I bet they’re on their ships in the docking bay,” Heather said. “They won’t have infected their own ships with the code.”

“As soon as we put our trojan virus in the system, they’ll know we’re up to something,” Hoan said.