Naecia shook her head. “Ben? If you can hear me – Aptat stole the Switch Drive. They are on their way to abduct me in order to run it. We don’t know where it is. Come down as quickly as you can.” She dropped the link. “SHIT!”

“You should run, Naecia,” said Izairis. “Hide.”

“Hide? Fuck you.”

“O-kay, just trying to be supportive,” answered Izairis, calling up the display.

“Sorry,” said Naecia.

“You’re under a lot of stress. Anyhow, more good news. The Timelance has emerged from bulkspace just outside the belt.”

“Shitfuck.” Naecia looked around desperately for anything that might help them. The power connections for the Switch had been sabotaged beyond use. “Izairis, can you ping Aptat’s com and find out where they are?”

Izairis played with the interface on the ship’s console. “Huh,” she chuckled. “No. They’ve frozen us out. But...” She pointed to the display as a small green blip appeared. “They still have their security card.”

“Those are traceable?”

“Of course. So that we could find each other,” she said. “Eighty-fifth degree of Blue Quadrant and moving south at pace. Must already be in a transway.”

“Alright,” said Naecia, checking the level on her Vortu blunderbuss. “I’ll be right back.”

She took the ship’s lift to the third deck. Just off of the galley, around a wall that curved outward and into one of the ship’s “wings” was the door to the second room that she’d only known about from schematics. Even then, every detail had been blacked out. It was easy to assume that it had once been Mother’s. Naecia made a perfunctory check on the lock, keying in her access code as an owner of the ship. It didn’t work. Aptat had somehow set additional security on the door. Fine.

Leveling the blunderbuss, she stepped back, twisted the barrel to narrow its shot aperture, and fired. The blast obliterated the door and the recoil flattened Naecia. Sucking in a breath, she pushed up onto her elbows, and twisted toward the weapon laying behind her. She considered it with bewildered respect for just a moment, then retrieved it and entered the room. “Lights.”

No lights. The room must have been entirely walled off from the ship’s systems. She turned on her helmet beams and scanned about. It was simple quarters: bed, cabinets, storage lockers, a head. The furthest wall was taken up by a vault – same as the one on the command deck below. Even through a heavy layer of dust it gleamed. “Mom’s old hiding spot, eh?”

She approached the vault, then halted, remembering to check in. “Izairis. Aptat update?”

“Sixtieth latitude, Naecia. What’d you find?”

“Can you break into the second living quarters up here? I think it’s cordoned off.”

“Standby.”

The lights came on.

“That was easy,” asked Naecia.