The hallway they’d stumbled across did indeed look disused and depressing, much like Ayna’s account of the station’s nether regions. A single green light shone up on the ceiling, which really just meant silhouettes instead of utter darkness. Fredrak slapped a little camera on the side of the wall, so those staying behind would have a bit of advance warning in case of either Authority or station troops.

Bers shifted the axe into his left hand and drew his pistol with the right. The man had expressed an interest in bringing his new toy on board, but on a habitat station an anti-vehicle weapon simply screamed ‘collateral damage’.

“Remember, Bers,” Gaylen said. “We have a goal here. This is not about looking for a fight.”

“No need to look, dagi,” the wild Fringer said, with an odd gleam in his eyes. “Fights find you.”

Gaylen spent a second wondering if the man meant that generally or about Gaylen himself, but then dismissed it.

They arrived at a basic, crank-sealed door and Gaylen worked together with Fredrak to turn the stubborn, squeaking crank. The space beyond was blessedly empty; a minor crossroads for various hallways, and a wall-mounted station map directed them to the next door. Once that one opened they started hearing signs of the battle.

“Attention all residents,” said a voice on various speakers. “Enemies have boarded at Sector Two. Stay in your homes.”

The man was trying and not quite succeeding in sounding calm and in control, and when the message repeated a few seconds later with the exact same inflections Gaylen realised it was a recording set on loop.

They went past a row of small businesses, catering to the locals rather than the space traffic, and felt a slight rumbling in the structure that was their only protection from the vacuum. The group reached one of the public tram terminals, but it was inactive. Presumably, the station management didn’t want to make things any easier for the Authority.

“It was worth a hope,” Kiris said, although sullenly.

“We can still run the tunnel,” Gaylen said, tracing his finger along the tram map next to the door. “Bers, can you open it?”

The Fringer got his axe blade into the crack, planted his feet firmly and pulled with all of his immense strength. Metal groaned and complained, but Gaylen focused his attention on the screen below the map. It seemed foolish of the station control to neglect turning off a public camera network, but to be fair they were probably panicking.

Flipping through the different feeds let him see conditions at each stop. The first two were simply devoid of life. The third feed showed a metal barricade that had been fastened in place. The fourth showed some of the fighting.

The Authority was, as before, conspicuously well-equipped for ultimately being a Nearer Fringe rag-tag army; brand-new guns, hard armour, and significant support by bots to offset relatively low numbers. The station force seemed to be putting up a surprisingly tough fight for essentially just being hired security, holding the enemy at a chokepoint with disciplined fire. But maybe they had ties to the alliance fighting outside in space. Perhaps there was more to this whole situation than Gaylen realised.

He didn’t care, nor to did he care to care. He just focused on the fact that the fifth feed showed yet more Authority troops moving through the station. Either one of those two forces had the potential to get uncomfortably close to Gaylen’s destination.

Bers gave up with an angry roar and yanked his axe free. Even with Fredrak helping he’d been unable to move the door. Presumably, it was securely clamped on the inside. The Fringer gave the door one frustrated chop, putting a deep cut into the metal.

They all faced each other. A keramak axe with a lot of muscle behind it could cut down a door like this, but it would take time they probably didn’t have.

“We’re walking, then,” Gaylen said, and drew everyone’s attention to the map. “Look... this route would take us too close to the fighting by one of the stops,” he said, dragging his finger along the map. “And this one would take us too close to the management centre. It is probably heavily entrenched by trigger-happy station troops. And the maintenance ducts almost certainly have security measures. I say we go through this residential here.”

He tapped a green-coloured area marked as Civet Sector.

“Poor defensive area, not a convenient route to anywhere important... we cut this left here into the commercial sector, then it’s just two floors down to Uktena Safety. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Fredrak said. “Let’s get this thing.”

Bers grunted and Kiris nodded.

“Alright, let’s...” Gaylen took the first step towards a short flight of stairs. “Actually... Bers, get the map.”

The Fringer slipped his axe-blade under the fixed map and popped it free. Gaylen picked up the rigid plate and brought it along in his left hand. Just in case. They went up the stairs and down a hallway, then right down another one. There was a very unpleasant rumbling in the station’s structure, and Gaylen suspected a damaged ship had just impacted the hull.

Gaylen regularly checked the map, fastening it in his mind.

They reached the Civet Sector. The area was utterly empty and quiet, aside from the constantly looping reminder to stay indoors. Somehow the drinking fountains, advertisements for family services, little school house and other markers of a residential area made it feel even more empty than the road they’d taken here. Behind each door the group rushed past was a family of ordinary people, just desperately hoping that this storm would spare them.

The area was indeed bereft of any meaningful cover. Gaylen chose to run alongside the left-hand wall, so at least there were the doorways, shallow though they were. The space was quite open, and up above were balconies, further adding to the vulnerable feeling.

“Attention all residents. Enemies have boarded at Sector Two. Stay in your homes.”

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There was another great rumble. Most stations were built with moderate impacts in mind, but when one had grown slowly over time like Uktena... who knew what could happen?

They did make it to the end of the residential. Directly in front was a heavy door marked by the Uktena family and on either hand was more hallway.

The need for all of this was a result of Gaylen being just a bit too clever, leaving the record keeper hidden away off-ship. It seemed almost appropriate that it would happen again. This was indeed an unimportant area, which was presumably why the two injured station security officers were choosing to retreat here.

They came around the right-hand corner. One was missing his helmet and had nasty burns on his head. The other had a severely burned leg and was only able to hobble along with help from her compatriot.

“Hey!” the woman yelled at the group, but it wasn’t a confrontation. Neither had their weapons, and it was only a breath later that Gaylen heard footsteps echoing after the pair.

Fredrak kept on going for the left-hand corner. Kiris followed on his heels, and after a moment’s hesitation so did Bers. Gaylen hesitated for a second moment, just long enough that he didn’t make it out of sight before the Authority soldiers came into view, leading with their rifles.

The five of them fired without hesitation, and Gaylen heard gasps of pain and hisses of plasma hits as he ran around that corner.

“HOLD IT!” one of them shouted as the barrage ended, and the sounds of feet continued.

Gaylen’s group passed through an intersection of the original station and the added portion they’d just been in, passing down a few steps as they did so. The doorway they went through had a deep alcove and immediately on either hand was a row of similar ones.

“Ambush,” Gaylen hissed softly. “They only saw me. Let them get close.”

Bers took up position right next to the door, holstering his pistol so as to have both hands on the axe. Kiris and Fredrak bumped into one another for a moment as they both went for the same doorway, then split up to hide in opposite ones. Gaylen continued on, passing by a second pair of doors, then a third, then dove into cover.

He poked his head out, keeping the pistol out of sight. The soldiers came down the stairs, faces hidden by combat helmets on top of distinctive green and white armour.

“Hey, I’m not with the station forces!” Gaylen shouted at them, doing his best to sound like a person unaccustomed to gunfire. “Just relax!”

“Step out!” the lead soldier said from the doorway. Inches away from him were Bers and his axe. “Let me see your hands!”

“Just be calm, man!” Gaylen shouted back, holding out his empty hand. “I was just trying to get out of here before everything-”

The soldiers came through the doorway. Though the Authority troops weren’t known for being top-tier professionals, they did have the sense to check their corners. The one who checked to the right got Bers’s axe right in the face. The keremak clove straight through the helmet.

Gaylen brought his pistol out and fired at the leader. His shot dissipated against a crackling energy shield, but Fredrak’s shot then shorted it out. Kiris fired with her own pistol and hit a less equipped soldier who simply had to take it on the breastplate.

Bers jabbed his weapon at another man’s faceplate, knocking him back and into his comrades. Gaylen drew the pistol he’d picked up on Nokior with his left and fired that one as well, hitting the leader right in the head. It clearly did something, as the man staggered for a moment and his own shot went into the floor. Gaylen fired with his main hand, hitting the helmet again, and now the man fell.

A soldier tried to barrel into Bers and deflect the axe with his rifle, but the big Fringer flung him up against a wall. Kiris ducked into the doorway as her target fired back, blowing away a chunk of her cover. Fredrak popped out and shot the man, hitting the weak spot between chest plate and helmet.

Gaylen moved more fully out of cover and fired with his left hand, then right, then left again, keeping up a faster rate of fire than pistols normally allowed for. As Bers butchered his latest victim Gaylen poured plasma into the last soldier as the man tried retreating, burning through his armour, taking his arm out of commission, before wounding him enough for the man to fall backwards.

The soldier tried to shift his off-hand to the trigger, but Gaylen was on him.

“Need backup...” the man groaned into his comm. Gaylen fired a double shot into the faceplate, and that was that.

“They’ll be coming,” Fredrak immediately said as he strode over to the nearest soldier and snatched up his rifle.

“Good...” Bers said through his teeth.

Gaylen could tell the man’s blood was up and would stay that way. The Fringer bared his teeth and gashed his scalp with the edge of the axe blade, letting out a low growl.

“Bers...” Gaylen tried, even though he knew it was pointless.

The man ignored him, banged on his own chest with a clenched fist, and yelled.

“Let them come!”

He let out one last hissing inhale, then turned and ran towards the sound of more feet. There was no time to try to reason with him, and no real chance of it working. So Gaylen snatched up a rifle of his own and kept on moving. An automatic door opened and closed at their passing, shutting out the sound of whatever was happening behind them. The station itself continued to rumble and complain at the battle taking place both inside and out.

From there they went around a local power station before coming to a wide door leading out to a balcony.

Sector Three, read the plaque above, in four languages. The station’s main commercial hub. The location of Uktena Safety. Gaylen emerged right across from where he’d taken a moment those weeks ago, gazing out over the flow of myriad peoples.

He took a quick glance over the railing, down the multiple floors of Sector Three. All was completely empty, nothing stirring save for the distant fighting.

“Down that way,” Gaylen said and pointed over the gap. “Two floors down.”

“Stay away from the rail,” Fredrak said.

Gaylen backed away just enough to not get shot by a possible enemy below or above.

“Actually...” he said, looking around. “I think we’ll use it.”

There was an elevator within sight but, like the tram, it was shut down. The rifle was set at full strength, so Gaylen aimed it at the railing and fired. The others didn’t need further explanation and fired their own weapons. In a few seconds the way was clear on both sides and Gaylen took a few more steps back, then ran and leapt.

He made it across, landing on the opposite balcony, slightly shy of the burning hot wreck of the balcony. Kiris came next. Her foot hit a bit of the debris with a scorching sound, but she yanked it away before her boot did more than smoke a little. As soon as Fredrak landed, Gaylen continued running.

They went down two narrow flights of stairs, then passed the spot where Gaylen had beaten down that Kapadian, and an ad-sign pointing the way to the storage. That was when the hardest rumble so far came, rattling Gaylen and the others on their feet as a very unpleasant groaning sound carried through the station. For a moment he thought this was it, and grabbed a handhold in case of vacuum.

A lower, slower rumbling followed, but nothing overly dramatic. Gaylen took out his comm and called Herdis.

“Status,” he said. “What happened?”

“A disabled Authority cruiser drifted up against the station,” the woman told him. “It looks like the station held, but another hit like that won’t be good news.”

“Well, we’re almost there,” Gaylen said as he continued running. “We’ll be right over.”

They rounded a corner and before them was the storage.

“We-”

The explosion went off right in front of them.