The hangar door was dead: no power, circuits fried for centuries. Damian stared at the unresponsive control panel before waving Triskar over. 

“You’re up.”

Triskar didn’t respond, just crouched on one knee and reached into the bag he was carrying. Damian walked away from the door, waving Nick along with.

“Triskar will get this sorted.” His voice was calm, but lacked his usual ease. He stared at Triskar’s back as he worked.

Triskar planted a small box, pressed a button on it, and shuffled away. The device clicked, and exploded, sending chunks of door falling backward. There wasn’t enough air to carry much sound, but the force of the explosion echoed in Nick’s chest.

“You brought a bomb?” Nick asked.

“Brought three,” Triskar said, voice loud in Nick’s helmet.

“Just in case,” Damian said. “We should be too far from the station for them to notice anything.” He stepped calmly around the three-inch slabs of metal, quickly disappearing into the dark hallway. Nick followed. 

Damian pressed a button on the side of his helmet and woke up two flashlights, one on either side of his temple. The light swept over the empty hallway, revealing Damian’s position as he walked further away.

Nick followed more slowly. He turned on his own lights and looked around. The walls were bare slabs of metal, still gleaming in the few gaps between scars and scorch marks. Rubble and scrap littered the floor, left behind by a rapid evacuation. They inched their way past a ship which had crashed through the station. Its prow reached through the ceiling, coming within a foot of the left wall. Nick placed his hand on the ship as he passed in, and looked into the cockpit. Behind the cracked glass lay a slumped figure. Nick quickly looked away.

Uncle Damian led the way through the ship, occasionally glancing at a hand-held computer he pulled from his belt, which showed rough schematics for the War World. They passed a crater punched through the ceiling and down through several levels of the station. Most of the doors were rusted open, revealing small rooms full of equipment, a lot of it missing or damaged. They passed a few bunks, spare rooms full of small, hard beds. They didn’t pass any more bodies after the ship, which Nick was grateful for.

They had been walking for a while when Damian suddenly stopped, reviewed his screen, and turned them into a side room. There was a large table in the center, and one of the same food synthesizers as on the Stargazer dominating one wall. 

“Is this it?” Nick asked.

Damian nodded. “The target's right up there.”

“Do you know how big the closet we’re aiming for is?” Triskar asked. 

“Small.” Damian walked to the back of the room, next to the synthesizer. He pointed upward. “Try for a two foot diameter, right here.”

Triskar nodded. He put down his bag and pulled out what looked like another trash bag.

“What’s that?” Damian asked.

“Portable airlock,” Damian said. “Just watch.”

Triskar brought out a machine that shot a thin wire into the ceiling and hooked it onto his vest. “Get over here.” He waved Damian and Nick over. The two of them stepped inside the trash bag and Triskar pressed the recall button on the rope-machine. The wire slowly wound back up, carrying Triskar to the ceiling, bringing the edge of the bag up with him.

The bag fed into a solid ring, like the space suits, which buzzed when Triskar held it up to the ceiling and held firm when he moved his hand away.

“Is that air tight?” Nick asked.

“For a while,” Damian said. “Long enough for us to get out undiscovered.”

“Pass me the welder,” Triskar asked. Damian handed him a long metal tube from the bag, which he held to the ceiling until the metal started to glow. He drilled through a single point until there was a pop.

“That’d be the atmosphere,” Damian said.

Triskar quickly cut a hole into the ceiling, pushing it aside like a manhole cover, and climbed through himself. He lowered the rope machine, and disappeared above the hole. Damian climbed up after him, Nick last.

It was dark in the closet, and warmer than the ruin, which was a relief. Nick had begun to lose feeling in his toes. He looked around. They were in a a small, dark room, with shelves on three walls; a normal supply closet. Triskar had done well with his cuts. There was a clean, circular hole in the center of the closet. Based on the lack of sounds outside, no one had heard them come in, but if someone stuck their head in, they’d see the hole in a heartbeat.

“We need to move fast,” Damian said. “Down the hall and to the left. Guard patrols should go past…now.” Damian held up a finger and they all got quiet. There was no sound. Damian frowned. “That's… odd...”

They waited five minute, enough for any completely silent patrols that may or may not have been present to leave, before they left their closet. The halls outside the closet were better lit than the Indomitable ruins, orange lights casting long shadows on the dark walls. Damian froze in the middle of the hallway, listening again. Again, no sound.

“Let’s go,” Damian whispered over the comms. He lead the way down the hall, past several rows of doors which remained mercifully closed, to the left, then a right, then stopped in front of another door.

Damian drew his gun before opening the door and jumping inside. Nick followed, gun at the ready. No one there. The long military rows of computers stood in silence.

“It’s empty,” Damian said.

“Were you expecting company?” Triskar said. “Because that would have been good to mention before.”

Damian shrugged. “I don’t know… I expected to find someone.”

“Things are going well, you should be glad,” Triskar said. He pulled a small round object out of his bag that looked like a ping-pong ball tapped to a flash drive with a horribly deformed end. He looked through three cabinets under the computer screens before finding what he was looking for. Triskar inserted the ping-pong ball into something, and stepped back.

“Fleith, you there?” Damian asked. 

“Right here, Captain,” Fleith said over the comm. His voice was more staticky than Damian’s or Triskar’s.

“Fleith, have you been on the comms the whole time?” Nick asked.

“No.” Nick heard the sound of chewing. “I just got here.”

“Are you eating snacks?” Triskar asked, mild horror in his voice.

“I’m not leaving crumbs,” Fleith said in his own defense.

“Not important,” Damian said. “Fleith, do you have access to the Kreeth computers?”

Loud clacking filled Nick’s helmet while Fleith buzzed idly. “Almost... and… yes. I’m in.”

“Good,” Damian said. “Get what we need and get out.” He looked over his shoulder at the door. He did everything but tap his foot. 

“Hmm.” Fleith made a less happy hum. “That’s going to be a problem, Captain.”

“What is it?” Damian asked.

“I have the plans,” Fleith said, “and I can wipe them from this computer, but there’s a backup locked in the station vaults. If you want to destroy every copy, you need to get to them.”

Damian frowned. “How do we get to the vault?”

“Get to it? You go down the hall and up a flight of stairs,” Fleith said. “Into it? You’d need the quantum-encrypted access code.”

“How do we get the access code?”

“A far better hacker than me would take centuries to brute-force their way through the door,” Fleith said. “The only way in is the key fob owned by the station master. He has it on him at all time.”

“Crap,” Damian said. He turned to Triskar. “That’ll complicate things.”

“We can’t get the key fob and stay hidden,” Triskar said. “And it’s a long walk back to the ship. If we’re found out, we’re done.”

“Not necessarily,” Damian insisted. “Revealing ourselves to a few people isn’t the end of the world, as long as we can get back to the ruins before the pursuit begins. The Stargazer can hide in the ruins while the heat dies down.”

“We would need to rob the station master in a way that doesn’t invite pursuit.”

Nick thought for a moment. “Maybe we can trick him, get him alone,” he offered. “Like, if he’s alone in his office and we lock the doors on our way out. People might not want to bother him.”

Damian nodded. “That’s right. The Kreeth military is very strict with hierarchy. It could be hours before people risk barging in on him. Fleith, do you know where the station master is.”

“I can check.” Fleith’s hum and the sound of keys came over the intercom before the keys stopped and the hum turned decidedly strained. “We have another problem,” he said quietly.

“What is it?”

“You remember how the patrol didn’t go by when you expected?” Fleith asked. “And how weirdly empty the station is?”

“Yes…” Damion said slowly.

“Well, now I know where everyone is.”

“Please tell me it’s not a mass murder/suicide thing.”

“What? No!” Fleith said. “They’re all attending to the station’s guests, the Marquess of Gri, and the Crown Prince and Princess of the Kreeth Dominions.”

“Oh, that’s so much worse for us,” Damian said. “Lots of guards?”

“So many.”

“The station master’s with them?”

“Practicing his brown-nosing, it looks like.”

“Fantastic,” Damian said. “Now we just have to trick him into giving up the chance to impress his liege-lord and the future king, and go into a small space where we can steal his key fob without anyone finding out about it.”

“We could always leave now,” Triskar said. “No one knows we’re here. We could give our employer the plans and they can just live with someone else having the same weapons. It’s not the end of the world.” 

Damian paused for an infinite moment before shaking his head. “No. We can’t leave. We just need to find a way—”

“Captain, there’s someone coming,” Fleith said. Damian and Triskar flew into motion. Twin closets stood along the back wall of the room. Triskar spun into one of them, opening the door as he went. Damian grabbed Nick’s arm and yanked him backward, both of them half-stumbling, half-falling into the closet. Triskar closed the door as soon as they got to safety, but he stuck his hand in its path, keeping it open a half-inch.

Nick crouched next to Triskar to peer through the opening. A man in a dark uniform walked into the room. He looked largely humanoid, maybe a bit taller than the average human, with dusty gray skin and stumpy antlers, not more than five inches tall, sprouting from his head. He looked in a hurry as he walked into the room and threw himself in front of one of the computers.

“What now?” Damian muttered.

“Wait,” Nick said. “Maybe this can work for us.”

“What do you mean?” Damian asked.

“Fleith, can you mess with the computer system?” Nick asked. “Make it look like it’s glitching?”

“I have complete access to the mainframe,” Fleith said. “I can do whatever I want to their computers.”

Nick explained to Damian, “If the guy finds a problem in the computers, he’d send it to his superiors, right? Maybe we can get the station master to come to us.”

“Except the Kreeth are extremely hierarchical,” Triskar said. “This guy will call his superiors, who will call theirs. We could end up with dozens of people in the room before the station master gets here. That’s not stealthy.”

“Unless…” Damian said. “The Kreeth are hierarchical and very proud. If the glitch revealed something incriminating about the station master, this guy might try to move it up the chain more quickly.”

“Ooh.” Fleith buzzed happily. “I bet I can find something. There’s always somethi—oh, look, I found embezzlement. A whole lot of embezzlement. Let’s see if this works.”

Nick watched the Kreeth’s screen carefully. First, the man stared at his controls as the screen froze, then watched as dozens of windows started popping up and disappearing, faster than Nick could keep track. A few windows, the particularly incriminating ones, stuck around.

“Trefk,” the man said as his computer started glitching. Then he got a good look at the data on his screen. “Trefkanic imperious…”

“That sound means it’s working,” Fleith said gleefully. “Let’s see what he does.”

What the man did was quickly delete the incriminating evidence on the screen. He grew increasingly frantic as his attempts to retake his computer yielded no results.

“And he chooses the ostrich duck-and-hide method,” Damian said, a grin in his voice. “I hope he doesn’t decide to just walk away and leave this for someone else to find.”

When he realized he couldn’t control the computer, the man stepped back forcefully enough to send his chair tumbling. He started pacing and staring at the words on the screen, grabbing at his forehead and softly repeating profanities. With the gasp of a man facing the firing squad, he pulled out his comm and spoke into it. 

“Lieutenant, there’s a problem in the computer room.” 

The man’s whole body flinched at the reply, a muddle of sharp words Nick just barely couldn’t hear, leaving only the general emotion behind.

“I know, sir. Yes, sir,” the man answered. “But there’s some kind of glitch. Files keep opening on their own… uh, private files.”

More sharp words. The man kept pacing. 

“There’s nothing I can do. Everything I try starts another loop that ends up with more open files on the screen. I… I think the station master might want to look at these.”

Another flinch.

“Yes, sir. But, sir, these files… they look like his stuff, sir. I don’t think he’d want his private files out for people to see… No, sir, I’m not threatening anyone. I’ve tried to get rid of them, there’s nothing I can… wait a minute.”

The man’s pacing stopped. He kicked open a mostly-closed cabinet door, revealing a bank of drives and flashing lights, a bank out of which sprung a device like a ping-pong ball taped to a deformed usb stick. The Kreeth crouched down to look at it.

“Sir, I think I’ve found something—”

BOOSH. Damian jumped out of the closet and fired, the blast of plasma blinding in the dim room, straight at the computer tech’s back. His comm set clattered to the ground.

“What was that?” Nick cried. 

“He found the patch,” Damian said defensively. “He would’ve kicked Fleith out of the system, and then they’d know we’re here.”

“They already know we’re here,” Triskar said. He nodded at the Kreeth’s dropped comm, which squawked louder now. 

“Corporal, corporal, come in…”