Vievel whirled around, his flashlight bisecting the darkness behind him. He was alone. He turned back only to again come face-to-face with the same empty crooked passage he’d been staring into a moment before. There was no-one else in the tunnel with him, at least as far as he could see.

“I know you’re there, I can see your light,” the voice said, a thoroughly disgruntled sound filling up the passage. It was a distinctly male voice, an Aelfr, sounding heavy and rough, but beyond that Vievel couldn’t tell much about the speaker. The invisible Aelfr continued, not interested in waiting for Vievel’s response or perhaps just enjoying the sound of his own voice. “Might as well stop pretending. When we gonna stop these games huh? Wandering about, pretending like you forgot all about me - ship’s dying. You might as well open that door, I ain’t gonna hurt-cha if you do”. His voice meandered on, growing steadily louder as he continued. “No point in wasting time, come on now, I’m getting bored-” he sighed, letting slip a small groan as he did. “Y’know if I gotta open this door myself I won’t be particularly happy.” An edge developed to his speech, weary and cautioning. “Give it a few hours you’ll all be oxy-sick and I’ll still be on my feet, why not make it now? Better for you.” The voice paused for a moment. “I’m a finer friend than I am an enemy, that I promise-”

“Hello?” Vievel ventured.

“Well, hello. ‘Bout time. You coming in?” Vievel looked around, listening for the speaker.

“Coming in where?” Vievel asked. He turned around once more, quickly scanning the passage behind him for the invisible Aelfr, and once again coming to face with nothing but the stone.

“What’dya mean where? Into my cell of course”. A laugh echoed out, a deep-seated hoarse laugh which twisted into a cough and ending in raspy sputtering.

“Your cell?” Vievel asked once the coughing sound had finished.

“Yeah”. Vievel heard the speaker tut to himself. “Wait a second - where are you?” Vievel hesitated, not sure whether to offer that information. Not knowing where the invisible Aelfr was speaking to him from made the decision all the more difficult.

“You’re in the vents!” The unseen speaker let slip another short laugh, one which quickly died in a series of painful-sounding throat clears. Vievel tried to deny it.

“No, I’m-uh-I’m outside your cell,” he said, squeezing the cloth in his hand.

“Hah, not a chance bub, I can see your light flickering through the ceiling vents too. You’ve gotta be in the vents,” the invisible Aelfr said, hacking as his voice caught slightly. “Excuse me,” he said. He noisily hawked up mucus before he spat, making a grunting throat-clearing noise several times before he finally chuckled. When at last the sound had dwindled away he spoke again. “So hey, wanna open the door then?”

“W-what?” Vievel stammered.

“I ain’t gonna hurt ya, promise,” the speaker said. The words hung trepidatiously on Vievel’s ears. Even an Aælfir could be a dangerous confrontation if they were from a different home ship or even just the wrong house; just because they were the same species didn’t make them friends, and his family, the Ulmadr, were long-stood enough that they had made more than a few enemies. Then, beyond even the blood feuds, rivalries, and opportunists, there were the Aælfir who belonged to the forbidden houses, the exiled who were a blight and a danger to all Aælfir in good-standing. Perhaps sensing Vievel’s apprehension he spoke up again. “We can go our separate ways soon as it’s open, if you like, just need a hand with the door, that’s all,” he said. “You know the ship’s dying right?”. He left the statement dangling, but the implications were clear. If Vievel didn’t help, the Aelfr would most certainly die shortly after the ship, once the remaining life support and gravity systems shut down, nothing would survive on the ship; the Ulmadr home ship had done considerable damage to the Dwurkn frigate even before it had made its boarding breach. Parts of the Dwurkn ship were already uninhabitable, and it was only under the influence of Aælfir medications, designed to help cope with the low-oxygen, that Vievel could breathe normally.

Vievel didn’t trust the speaker, but the consequences weighed on him. He considered leaving the unseen Aelfr and turning around, going back to search for the correct tunnel. Enough time had passed that Vievel felt confident he could use his flashlight without worrying about getting caught by the Advance, but something pulled at the back of his mind. The speaker spoke Aælfir. His voice was deep and husky, but he was definitely no Dwurkn; even if he was different, from another house or home ship, he was kin. Each time Vievel tried to imagine leaving the Aelfr behind he found himself unable to properly picture it, as though he was asking something impossible of himself; it was like trying to picture himself tearing steel with his bare hands, or leaping between starships.

“Hey, you still there?” the unseen speaker asked.

“Yeah, sorry,” Vievel replied. An idea was forming in his head. “Do you know your way around this ship?” Vievel asked him.

“I got a bit of a run of it”.

“I’m lost, I can’t find the way back to- I don’t even know where my ship docked,” Vievel confessed. Silence answered him and for a moment Vievel wondered whether he had heard him. “If you can help me-”

“I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Gotcha.” A note of sorrow crept into the speaker’s voice, though Vievel couldn’t understand why. “What did it look like?”

“My ship?”

“No, where you docked”. Vievel thought for a moment. The home ship’s mag-cannon had cut a hole into the Dwurkn frigate large enough to deploy a landing channel, which the war company and, presumably, the Ulmadr advance had used to board the Dwurkn ship. Both he and Halycen had instead used jump-rigs to cross the deep and dark, jump-rigs which they’d stashed near the breach with enough fuel to make the short-range hop back to the home ship; using the landing channel would have ended with the two of them getting caught before their excursion really began, but it was the landing channel he had to find now.

The channel was a collapsible nanotubing tunnel, with an inbuilt oxygen field and wide enough for six Aælfir side-by-side, extending from an airlock on the home ship to the breach in the frigate. The breach itself had mostly covered a large single room, but it had also spread into several adjoining corridors and passages, making them indistinguishable from each other. The main part of the breach, the large room, was warehouse-like, perhaps some kind of storage bay; its walls had been made of a smooth uniform charcoal-black, the same as the main corridors of the Dwurkn frigate but with two parallel white lines running perpendicular to the wall along the edges of the floor. The room had contained a great deal of salvage, crates, and storage, mostly filled with food or munitions, but the majority of the salvage had been blown into the deep and dark when the home ship had made its initial breach; Vievel recalled his father issuing a sanction for the navigations ensign who had made the mistake.

Vievel relayed his memory of the room to the unseen speaker.

“Sounds like a loading bay, yeah,” he replied. “I think I know the exact one, I can guide you there,” he said. “Get the door open and we’ll talk”.

“Alright, how do I get to your cell?’ Vievel asked, eager to get the job over and done with.

“Jump out at the next vent panel, it’ll be right there,” the voice quickly replied. Vievel glanced down the passage, looking for another hatch. The light from his torch didn’t reflect against anything as he looked, leaving him to imagine that there was no such hatch.

In the distance of the tunnel, Vievel could hear a mechanical grinding, the ship’s machinery wailing in pain. Halycen lied, he thought dejectedly. The Dwurkn frigate wasn’t going to support life for much longer; he could already feel himself taking a fourth breath for every three, straining for what little oxygen was hanging in the air. The starship’s systems were stressed to their breaking point.