Several minutes passed with the crew of the Sparrow watching in mute horror as their ship trundled leisurely toward the yawning chasm in reality controlled by a hand not their own. For Malan, he knew his experience was a little different from what the others were experiencing. Horrific as it may be, this was not his first encounter with a rift.

He knew, for example, the others would be feeling a sickening wrongness, like reality itself was nauseous. Teeth would grind, sweat would begin rolling down foreheads, and fists would clench and unclench as people fought against the instinct to claw at their own skin to tear out the wrongness they felt within themselves.

On the Jauda, things had got so bad before rescue arrived that a few had started to actually try to do just that.

On the Sparrow, it was still early. Thaddeus fidgeted with the lapels of his medical coat. Elena fiddled anxiously with some loose component or other under her pilot’s station as she looked out at the rift. Malan simply stared, mouth dry, and tried not to think about how he could put a familiar face to each of the screams in his memory of the last time he’d encountered a rift, nor about how, by the pitch and ferocity of the screams, he could tell which were in terror and which were a response to the sensation of being torn into bloody chunks.

The thing that really set him apart, however, was what he could see. The white gleam of celestial energy swarmed all around them, almost as though it, too, was deathly afraid. Beyond the viewing screen, the energies that usually drifted and danced through the emptiness of space, flinched and squirmed away from the rift, and any that drew too close was sucked in, never to be seen again.

That, perhaps, was scarier than any other part of this. Celestial energy was widely regarded as the fundamental force in the galaxy. It existed, invisible to almost everyone, throughout every atom in existence. Seeing something so pervasive, so essential to existence, be consumed absolutely terrified him to the core.

Only Talia had redirected that nervous energy into something positive. Instead of fidgeting, her hands raced to input commands into her station. Running diagnostics, hunting for some bug, some flaw that would override the autopilot they’d been locked into. In the end, it was her voice that shook them from their stupor.

“Captain?” She half-whispered, voice shaking. “I have found a way to override the autopilot, it’s just—Well, look for yourselves.”

Malan leaned forward to look at her monitor and sucked a sharp breath through his teeth as Elena swore.

“That motherfucker! Whoever did this is fucking messing with us, even now, heading towards a Goddamn rift!”

“Excuse me, but for those of us who don’t understand what it is you’re looking at,” Thaddeus asked, eyebrows knitted.

Malan exhaled, scratching his chin. “It’s a randomised password puzzle. Twelve separate passwords need to be input, selected randomly from a bank of passwords of an unknown number. The real head scratcher is that once you start breaking, you have a set time to solve all twelve before they’re replaced by another set from the bank.”

The older man blinked. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. Sounds like something that could be circumvented with advanced enough software, however?”

“That’s the curious thing about it, Thad—you’re exactly right. Given enough time, we can even get the outdated systems on the Sparrow to help crack it.”

“And time is exactly what we don’t have,” Elena bit out, an ugly scowl marring her face. “Malan, you feeling up to it? You and Talia are the only ones on the bridge right now with the know-how to circumvent this.”

“It doesn’t really seem like there’s much choice, Captain,” Malan said, his weak smile an attempt to hide just how fucking terrified he really was.

She clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re not wrong there. Get to it, you two. Myself and Thaddeus will go and see if Beric’s work can be sped up with an extra pair of hands, and, to be safe—”

Elena paused, and reached under her station for the object she had been fidgeting with earlier, withdrawing it with two hands and slinging its black polyester strap over her shoulder in a motion that appeared more natural to her than breathing.

For the first time since Malan had known her, their Captain appeared truly at ease. All it had taken was the familiar weight and cold metallic touch of a deep crimson battle rifle. She angled it towards herself, and ran discerning eyes across its bulky body, checking for any sign of fault or defect.

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Malan recognised it as a repurposed UGC military model, well-used and battle-tested, but like her plate armour, it was clearly flawlessly and rigorously maintained. She ran her fingers across the rounded power-cell beneath the trigger, checking the thumb-width connecting power cables that ran between it and the main body of the weapon. Satisfied, she flicked a switch on the power cell, and the weapon whirred to life, with four small bars lighting up yellow across the power cell, showing it was fully charged.

“Stay on your toes you two,” she said. “I don’t want to think that any of you has betrayed us, but someone has, and unless we’ve had a stowaway stay unnoticed for our entire stay here, it is one of us. Eventually, they’re going to have to reveal themselves. Make sure you’re ready for anything and use the comms to keep us in the loop. Let’s move, Thad.”

Even with those ominous words looming over them, Malan settled into Beric’s station and he and Talia got to work on reclaiming control of their own ship’s autopilot.

It was oddly comforting. Setting the Sparrows limited processing power to task automatically cracking the passwords was a fairly quick job, especially with someone as competent of Talia to share the work with. Once that was done, all the pair of them could do was add their own attempts to the password cracking process.

Entering a slew of random keystrokes, using the computer’s software to check if any were correct, before going again. Monotonous, but easy, and the perfect distraction from the crimson storm outside, and the reality of what awaited them as they failed. He frowned as his fingers flew, as a thought struck him.

“I don’t understand why our traitor chose this method of locking us out,” he started, and Talia blinked, surprised he’d even spoke.

“It does seem overly complicated,” she agreed.

“Not just that. Overly complicated and imperfect. Why not just permanently lock our course? This is breakable, so what’s the point? What benefit could be gained by consigning us all, including the traitor, to death?”

Talia frowned, then her eyes widened as Malan cracked one of the passwords. In rapid succession, the Sparrow’s computer cracked two more before an alert rang out and the passwords reset, giving them a fresh set of twelve to solve. Immediately, Malan saw her belief waver as she remembered exactly what they were up against, and tears welled at the corners of her eyes.

“How can we possibly solve this, Malan? We’re right back to square one—”

“But that’s exactly my point, Talia—We aren’t back to square one. Randomised passwords are time-consuming to crack, but that’s all. It’s why they’re not used for serious security anymore.”

The computer solved another password, before Talia solved her first despite her tears and Malan solved another almost at the same time.

“That and the fact that every password in the bank has to be memorised. It means the bank can never be that big, because they have to be remembered. We don’t lose our progress when the passwords reset—the Sparrow will keep track of our solved passwords. All we have to do is solve enough that already solved passwords get rotated back into the puzzle. Eventually, there’ll be enough solved that we’ll be presented with a set of passwords that are mostly already cracked.”

Talia’s eyes widened in recognition. “Then all we have to do is solve the remaining passwords within the time limit.”

“Exactly. It’s why this is so weird. None of these sabotages are meant to trap us permanently. They’re meant to stall us. Hold us for just long enough.”

“Long enough for what, though?” Talia asked, biting her lip.

“That,” Malan said, grinning slightly in grim satisfaction as another slew of passwords were solved between him, Talia and the computer. “I don’t know. Though, now that I think about it, one of the biggest weaknesses of this system is that people had to remember the passwords. Most people just aren’t able to memorise two or three, let alone dozens…”

He stood, eyes wide and roaming the bridge as a bolt of pure inspiration hit him. If he was right, they didn’t need to crack these passwords at all.

“What are you doing, Malan?” Talia said, the worry clear as a bell in her voice.

“Looking for something,” he said, adrenaline flooding his veins as he finally saw a way out. “Think about it, Talia. Memorising dozens of passwords is crazy. Any more than that is flat out impossible. So, what people used to do, was store them on a data stick. Like an old-school physical key.

“If they were your passwords, all you had to do was connect your data stick. I’d forgotten—it’s been so long since I’ve even seen this system on anything, let alone had to use it. There’s no way our traitor has memorised all these passwords, or has any intention of typing out twelve passwords with the Abyss bearing down on them. No, there’s a data stick to unlock this thing, all we need to do is find it.”

Malan was tearing through every cupboard and storage nook, desperately looking to confirm his suspicions, and he heard Talia stand up from her station behind him to help.

“Should I let the Captain and the others know, we could start searching pockets and find out who the traitor really is?”

Malan shook his head without turning around, and half-answered Talia’s question, half-thought aloud. “No. This person is clever. Meticulous. Even if I don’t understand the logic, it’s clear everything that’s happened has been fully intentional. Keeping it on your person introduces too many ways to get caught. It’s hidden on the ship somewhere. Almost certainly on the bridge to allow for a quick escape. Hell, maybe even hidden right in plain sight. Who the hell looks twice at a—”

He paused, eyes focusing in on the pilot’s station, where Elena had a series of papers and desk tidies across the top related to work, and his heart soared. There, tucked neatly in a desk tidy, was a thin black data stick. Malan scrambled across to it, snatching it up triumphantly, movements so clumsy he almost didn’t hear the whir of an energy weapon charging up behind him.

“Such a clever boy,” Talia’s voice rang across the otherwise silent room like an explosion, unrecognisably cold and without emotion. “But I’ll be taking that back, thank you.”