She peered in at Bash, hoping against hope that maybe just maybe this might be the time for him to show some hint of his earlier awareness. She wanted, more than anything, to hear him tell her whether she was doing the right thing, or even acting like a stupid idiot. Instead, he just stared mindlessly past her.

Goodbye, Bash, she said anyway, from inside her breather. And thanks for saving my skin. Twice.

She sealed the door and set the escape pod to launch. A red light began to strobe as the pod slid into a launching tube, but by then she was already on her way to the engineering section.

Gabrielle worked her way through the ship until she reached the main fabricator bay, which was filled with huge, industrial-scale machinery that could manufacture anything from cutlery to replacement drive-spines for the hull. The engineering section lay on the far side of this, and she made her way down a narrow aisle between the fabricators, ducking beneath feed pipes and thick bundles of cable.

The ship suddenly shook around her with sufficient force to tear one of the fabricators loose from the brackets holding it to a wall. The huge machine floated free, drifting towards her and tearing cables and pipes loose as it came. It looked as if it probably massed at least a couple of tonnes, and she scrambled to get out of its way. But the zero gravity made any movement that much harder, and she was still far from adept at manoeuvring under such conditions.

The huge machine sideswiped her, and sent her spinning. She let out a cry of pain, but at least managed to keep it together enough to avoid getting crushed between the machine and the wall towards which it was drifting.

Something didnt feel quite right with her arm, and she pulled it close to her chest as she passed into the engineering bay, looking around in the hope of spotting more of the orange emergency boxes. She really, really needed to swap her breather for a fresh one, since she had, at best, only a few minutes of air left.

Then she spotted some mounted on a wall inside the fabricator bay just a moment before the drifting fabricator crushed them beneath its weight.

Oh, damn.

Trying to reach for a handhold with her injured arm, she nearly screamed from the pain. It felt like being stabbed with a red-hot razor.

She was now left with a stark choice. She could turn around immediately and make her way to the aft launch bay, and the escape pod there. But with the fabricator blocking her way, that would mean a long detour that would cost her precious minutes.

Or she could stay here and set the nova mine to detonate, at the risk of asphyxiating herself before she could get to safety.

She glanced at the readout on her mask, and then wished she hadnt.