He reached up and traced the wires coming off the panels. “Every-thing’s wired in parallel and with three separate power sources, just in case the box jumps in the middle of something. But even if they do, a single cell from any of the battery banks should still have enough juice to drive the plates away from each other.”

“What if the grav plates jump in the middle of something?”

“It won’t matter,” Cole said. “That’s how they’re built in a ship’s decking, anyway.” He slapped the steel wall. “Besides, that’s the whole point of the design. We can’t jump inside a ship, because there might be something in the way. However, if these puppies become one with something else, they’ll drag all that material apart once the grav panels fire. It’ll create an empty box, no matter what it hits. And that’s what we’ll be jumping inside of a few seconds later.”

“I’m with you so far. The box jumps in, the grav panels engage, the plates fly apart and drag open a cube of empty space. You jump in a second later . . . so now you’re inside a box of solid steel. What next?”

Cole put his hands together and swished a perfect third angle attack. “We pop our swords, cut our way out, and take care of the crew.”

Penny ran her fingers back through her hair and surveyed the struc-ture thoughtfully. She turned and looked Cole up and down. “You thought of this?”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” he said, grinning. “Though, I do think I had some help.”

“Yeah? Ryke, right? This is totally his sort of thing.”

“No, I think it was from the training.” Cole grabbed his imaginary sword and slashed at her with an angle-two. “Repulsion,” he said, smiling.

“More like attraction,” said Penny, stepping close. She reached around Cole, her face approaching his.

“I, uh—”

“This is wired wrong,” Penny whispered. She pursed her lips, then grinned at him coyly before stepping away.

Cole turned, blushing. He looked down at the wiring harness behind him. The leads from the grav panels were reversed, the polarity completely backward. The panels wouldn’t have flown apart—they would’ve been permanently locked together! He looked around for a screwdriver to loosen the terminals, then decided to bend down and check one of the other two battery feeds.

Same thing.

Cole glanced around the workshop to see if anyone was watching. As he contemplated the chances of wiring two panels backward, he felt a chill run up his spine, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling with danger. He turned to tell Penny, but the workshop’s double doors were already swaying back and forth from her departure. He looked around for Ryke, who had just been supervising another welder, when he saw the two workers in the neighboring cage peering up at him.