It was as if time had frozen.

Kaine had never been a gambler, but sometimes you had to take a chance.

This was risky, but he couldn’t come up with a better plan.

It was a gamble because if any of these two goons knew anything about shipbuilding, they could figure out what this would do.

But they obviously did not.

He saw their fingers move in slow motion, and press down together on the four colored squares.

There was a reason they had been set so far apart from each other. It was for safety reasons. To avoid anyone ever pressing them together by mistake.

Modern ships were built with aluminum, graphite, and alundil metals. But these older models—especially one as old as Starrider—still used selite.

Alundil and selite were both alien materials, valued for their extreme hardness and their resistance to vacuum. But the latter had a flaw the former lacked. It absorbed echion energy. To circumvent this issue, complex alloys were used as insulators. Still, you had to be able to access the selite structures in case they needed to be repaired. So a safeguard system was set up. Whenever activated, it would temporarily disable the insulator. Knowing this, technicians would be careful not to bring any echion-powered devices into the room...

Such as phasers.

When the four buttons were pressed, a screeching squeak echoed through the engine room and the lights flickered for a second. Then everything went back to normal.

“All good,” said Kaine.

Juden quirked a brow. “Really?”

“Now we just need to get back to the control room to power the ship up.”

They had to act quickly. The insulators would come back online in half an hour, which was plenty enough time. The tricky part was that they couldn’t go too far, as the insulators were only disabled in the engine room. In the halls, the phaser would work as expected.

He could have disarmed Juden now, but what stopped him was Warthol. That one needed no phaser. Taking him out would be a challenge.

He’d had time to think while they walked to the engine room, but it was going to be tight. Val could have helped, but he had no way of telling her the phaser was dead without warning the goons.

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So he’d have to take a chance.

“Fine,” said Juden. “Let’s go.”

He still looked suspicious, and rightfully so.

Kaine started toward the door.

It was now or never.

He had to time this well.

As he stepped forward, he tripped backward, falling toward Warthol.

The large man, startled, reached out to grab him.

Kaine spun around as he shouted: “Phaser’s dead!”

He hoped Val would be quick to react, but he couldn’t afford to wait and see.

His hand shot out toward the man’s knee and he hit it with full force.

Warthol yelped as he stumbled back and crashed to the ground.

Kaine heard scuffling sounds behind him and Juden swearing.

Without taking time to think, he jumped on the brute, grabbed his head with both hands, and repeatedly slammed it hard against the floor. He didn’t want to kill him, but he suspected this guy would be hard to overcome, so he didn’t want to take any chances. He only stopped when Warthol went limp.

Only then did he look over his shoulder.

Juden was on the floor, unconscious. Val stood above him, her right foot resting on the invader’s chest. She held his phaser and stared at it with a frown.

She glanced at Kaine.

“How did you do that?”

“Long story short: I temporarily disrupted the phasers so we could take control of the situation.”

“Huh. Didn’t know you could do that.”

“To be honest, it would have been impossible on a more modern vessel.”

Val beamed. “Told you this was an awesome ship!”

Kaine rolled his eyes. “Why don’t we focus on tying these two up before they wake up?”

She nodded. “Good point.”

As they were busy doing this, they heard the ship come back to life.

Val looked up. “Nim?”

“I’m here.”

Relief was obvious in the young woman’s voice and expression.

“How did you do it? I thought you’d powered off!”

“Only partially. I used a subroutine to hide, though I could still hear everything. Sorry if I didn’t respond when you boarded. Anything I said could have alerted them I was still operational.”

She smiled. “That’s alright. You did the right thing. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Kaine cleared his throat. “So am I. But we need to get out of here before the Impies spot us. Then we have to figure out what to do with these two.”

“And who they are!”

“Right.”

“Why not just leave them here?” asked Nim.

Kaine scratched the back of his neck, thinking.

“It’s tempting. But we do need answers. Besides, they’ve been after us since Evenodds, if not earlier, so if we let them go they’d just keep chasing us. I’d rather have them under lock and key than have to worry about them dropping on us out of nowhere—like they did here.”

Val was looking over Warthol.

“With all the blows he received, you’d think he’d be bleeding, but I don’t see a single drop. Tough skull, this one.” She straightened and looked at the wall. “That said, I agree with Kaine. We’ll keep them in one of the empty cabins. Too bad this ship doesn’t have a brig.”

“It was never meant to hold prisoners.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

“Sorry.”

“You do realize that keeping them here though won’t stop others from chasing us?”

Kaine frowned. “What do you mean?”

“They weren’t the only ones after you back on Evenodds, if I remember correctly.”

“Oh. The bearded guys. I’d forgotten about those.” Kaine fell silent for a moment, staring at Juden and Warthol. “They obviously weren’t working together... Why are they all coming after me? This makes no sense.”

“They probably all wanted the cube.”

As she said this, they both straightened and looked around.

“Where is Ondine?” asked Kaine.