Giraud in the lead got the outer door of the airlock open, it was a simple matter of pressing a button then pulling a lever. Inside the airlock, I held Skippy in one hand and jacked the plug into a port in the airlock, while Giraud followed a sequence Skippy had taught him on the airlock's control panel, to force open the inner door while the outer door was still open. This was a dangerous moment, with both doors open, an alarm would sound that even Skippy couldn't squelch yet. The inner door slid open with a bang and a loud alarm began blaring, the twenty two people of the assault team squeezed through the airlock into the corridor as quickly as humanly possible and as soon as the last person was through, I bashed my fist into the button that caused the outer door to slam close and cut off the alarm. That was the signal for Desai to get the Dodo moving, and for our assault team to split up and head toward the bridge and the engineering section.

The most important task was mine; to plug Skippy into a wall jack. A wall jack that, for a panicked split second of eternity, I couldn't find. In my defense, I was floating upside down near the ceiling, trying to keep out of the way of the assault team, getting bumped, elbowed and once kicked in the face. We were all awkward in zero gee, none of us had training in zero gee combat and we hadn't any opportunity to practice. Aboard the Dodo, I'd made everyone except the pilots practice flipping around, controlled landings on a wall, pushing off with feet and hands. There was not room enough, or time enough in the Dodo for anyone to be confident they could do much more than not puke when they spun around.

Finally, after an impossibly long two seconds, I spotted the wall plug, at the same time gunfire rang out forward, the Kristang on his way to the docking bay had seen the forward assault team. From the sound, I recognized the buzzing of Ruhar weapons, and the heavier report of a Kristang rifle, then only buzzing. Ignoring distractions, I pulled myself down the wall, took the plug out of my teeth and carefully inserted it in the wall jack. "Are you in?"

"Busy," was Skippy's only reply, and considering his lightning fast processing speed that concerned me. Then, "I'm in. We're good. Ship's systems are in my control. Ejecting docking bay doors." There was a shudder, as Skippy used an emergency procedure to blow the doors outward, rather than retracting them to the sides, we couldn't wait for them to cycle normally. "Dodo is on the move."

The ship lurched violently, bouncing me off the wall. Skippy said he had control, the ship should not have been able to move! "What the hell was-"