Lana's frown deepened. “What if they follow your example by turning to piracy against innocent traders, like this group in Novvis? Are you publicizing your methods and goals, so people don't do bad things in your name and ruin the reputation you're trying to build?”
Aiden slammed his fist against his armrest. “We're just one ship! We can't solve all the pro-”
“Break off our approach!” Ali cut in suddenly.
Just acting on her urgent tone alone, he'd complied almost as soon as she started speaking. Then, still with no idea what was going on, he gunned the engines to take them away from the station on a different vector, eyes raking the display for hints of threats.
“What is it?” he demanded when he didn't find any.
His companion was busy at her own station as she replied. “I've been monitoring the movement of ships around the station, and two light cruisers with unknown markings are following a suspicious pattern. Projections confirm that pattern was allowing them to approach our position undetected, utilizing the other ships approaching and leaving the station as cover.”
Sure enough, as she was speaking Aiden finally spotted two ships breaking away from the usual lines of station traffic to pursue them. He cursed and glanced over at Belix. “We're going to need more speed, Miss Ishiv!”
“If you say so, Mister Thorne,” Belix replied sarcastically, tweaking the engines from her station. Ideally, she should be down in the engine room, but better to be doing her job remotely than be caught needing to do an urgent task that could keep them all from dying while she was halfway there.
“Does your projection of suspicious patterns account for our pursuers anticipating we might've spotted them sneaking up on us, and made plans for that?” Barix demanded, sounding worried rather than his usual snarky self.
Ali gave the slight man a surprised look. “I hadn't . . . oh. Void!”
Aiden spotted it a the same time she cursed: a light frigate completing a rift jump almost directly in their path. The cruisers must've been coordinating with it over the allnet via the station's permanent rift, allowing them to feed it the coordinates to jump in and cut them off.
That was some pretty advanced military tactics, which pointed to . . . “Deeks,” he spat. “They're onto us.”
Not that it could've been anyone else. No idea why, or more importantly how, the Last Stand could've been spotted and pursued by the Movement here of all places, but it had to be.
This was looking to turn unpleasant, which meant they needed their engines officer at her system. “Belix, get down to the engines now!” he snapped. As the elfin woman scrambled to comply he turned to Lana, who was hunched down at her terminal staring at the main display with enormous eyes. “She might need help in the engine room,” he told the young woman. “Go assist her.”
Lana nodded uncertainly and stood, joining Belix as they both rushed off the bridge.
To be honest, the Ishivi probably didn't need help, especially from a novice crewman who still barely knew the system, and hadn't learned what to do during combat. But the engine room was one of the most protected place on the ship, even more so than the bridge itself, and he wanted to keep his newest crew member safe.
Besides, if they were about to die it might be kinder if the young woman wasn't where she could see it coming. He hated to think like that, but he'd lost too many friends for it not to enter his mind.
* * * * *
“Um, engine room's this way, Lana!” Belix called, slowing her frantic sprint to give her a confused look.
“Just using the facilities before I lose bladder control in the middle of a fight,” Lana replied with words that weren't hers, although spoken with her voice.
The Ishivi smirked at her. “Believe me, I speak from experience when I say it's better to pee yourself than get blown up because you're not where you're supposed to be.” She paused. “Although obviously I have no experience with that second thing, but you get my point.”
Lana's face was numb, but her expression and tone were perfectly calibrated to draw the desired response from the small woman who considered her a friend. “But I bet Barix never let you live it down, right?”
Belix rolled her eyes. “He teased me mercilessly for months about it being some sort of mating display for the festering disease sitting in the pilot's chair. He still brings it up sometimes.” She gave her an exasperated look, but her sharply delicate features held a hint of amusement. “Fine, I guess there are worse ways to die than sitting on a toilet. Just hurry.”
The engines officer bolted off, leaving her free and unsupervised to head the other way. Past the facilities and to her room.
Finally, access to an allnet connection. Lana was fairly certain she'd worked a backdoor into the ship's computer that would allow her to send a data packet to a receiver on the station, where it would make its way to the entire task force.
Although it was a stroke of luck that there were already enough ships nearby to intercept the Last Stand while it was in this system; she'd been planning to find a safer way to send her report, but with the task force ships and local conscripts intervening it was vital to get her information sent off as soon as possible, then be ready for the trigger that would activate her.
The engine room would be a convenient place to be for that.
Because Ali would've quickly uncovered any backdoor left on the ship's computer, Lana had created her program, and the accompanying data packet, on a personal tablet that was isolated from any other system. Installing the backdoor was as simple as loading it from the tablet into the computer, where hopefully it would execute and then delete itself, erasing her tracks, before Ali was
