Captain cursed as she twisted herself to catch the ring they just passed through else they'd roll off the frame and fall to the chamber floor below.
“This is ridiculous," Detrol huffed, "we just fell through sideways - you nearly bashed your head on the ring! Are we there yet?”
“We should be dropping into the pocket any second now,” she gritted, leaping to the ring nextdoor, “probably within the next three -”
A crushing, invisible force cut her off mid-sentence and launched them out of the jump, dropping them directly onto a bridge platform in a heap.
“- jumps…or sooner,” Captain finished cheerily, then hopped immediately to her feet and dusted herself off. “Ack,” Captain inhaled sharply, inspecting a deep singed gash on the side of her upper arm. “They grazed me.”
For Detrol, it took several seconds for his sensors to determine the ceiling from the floor, then he also stood. This bridge was different from the others in that it was wooden, hastily thrown together, and had only two active portals. The chamber was also much smaller than the others, in fact it was borderline claustrophobic with its stale cold air and close walls. There were no doors or access to the chamber other than the dark, bottomless pit below them and the walls were roughly hewn rock, angling inward to converge above them to form a low ceiling. We must be underground.
“How…rustic,” he mused. “You ready?”
She gave him a thumbs up as she loosened the black wrap that covered her torso and retied it behind her back, exposing a well-kitted utility belt.
"And did the client happen to mention which ring?" he prodded.
"The one supplied with a giant coolant line," she answered pointing to the bulkier ring portal. "Apparently the lab is hidden at the mouth of a magma chamber in some active volcano near the canyons."
Detrol whistled. "Pretty clever: impossible to access, except via a bridge portal. I hope they don't have any organics operating there."
"Nah, should just be some basic androids. Anything more advanced would be problematic." She clapped her hands. "Alright, enough gabbing. We have six minutes before they figure out what we’re doing.”
He nodded to the control box at the far end of the bridge. “And another four minutes before they can do anything about it.”
She smirked. “Love it, Detty. Do your thing, I’ll do mine.”
With a grim nod, she dropped into the ring portal. As she dissipated from sight, he strode towards the box, scrambled the lock and popped open the panel. Ignoring the array of blinking switches and controls, he connected to the bridge computer and was delighted to find his suspicions prove true: this system was completely isolated from the bridge network, meaning that - unless the Warp Bridge Authority had foreknowledge of the accidental migrating pocket of access to this bridge - the only access to that chamber was through the two active rings, and one of those was a dead end.
All he had to do was seal off the other ring, which was simple in theory. There was however a small hitch: as soon as the connection was lost, whoever was on the other side of that ring would be alerted immediately that there were trespassers. Since those people would certainly know the exact coordinates to the chamber, all they'd need to do is reset it to channel a location and not another ring. Then they would drop in via a one-way portal as he and Captain had.
"Just gonna put this bug right here," he mumbled as he uploaded his Slingshot, a script safeguard that he had sunk hours into perfecting. "And now for the ride home."
He slid the side panel of the control box open and a flimsy maintenance ring portal swung out from its fixture and fell forward into place. He then popped open his chest compartment, carefully pulled out a black faceted cylinder, and slid open a small panel on the side to reveal a display screen. Power bank full, the display read. Through the translucent display was a blue radiant crystal encased loosely in a glowing mesh.
"You were very expensive," he said to the crystal, articulating each word with a small shake of the cylinder. "Don't. Let. Me down."
He connected the power bank to the ring and fiddled with its controls until the portal glowed active, then entered the coordinates of their ship's location.
A sharp alarm wailed and the portal that Captain had disappeared through shuddered violently.
"Well that doesn't look good," he observed.
With a blast that certainly would have burst his eardrums were he an organic, Captain materialized in the ring's aura as it opened, carried on a cacophony of cracking sounds and bursts of flaming debris.
“Alrighty, let’s get out of here,” she said unaffected as she emerged form the aura, covered in large flecks of ash. The burning chunks of debris fell into the abyss below them as the aura dissipated. The alarm continued to sound.
“What the hell was that?”
She patted herself down, setting black ash airborne. “Just some explosives.”
“Wait - where is the cargo?” he demanded, his panic starting to ignite into anger. She dropped her hood and face covering, revealing a sooty but guilty facial expression.
“...In the room with the charges," she mumbled, avoiding eye contact as she bent forward and shook her head. More ash fell loose.
“What!?”
She pointed to the maintenance ring in front of him. “Work on the sequence home, tin man.”
He flung up his hands. “Oh for heaven’s beans, we’re not getting paid are we?”
She pulled out a pistol from her waistband and blasted the base of the shaking ring. The alarm ceased. “Well it’s not impossible, but I’d be surprised. Sequence, Detrol.”
“You know it was very cruel of you to dangle the possibility of upgrades, Captain, if this was your plan from the off.”
“We’ll just find the money somewhere else.”
“Where? You keep purposefully botching the gigs, no one will hire us with this reputation.”
“We’ll have the reputation of being the idiots who got caught by the Tuala-Ruen government if you don’t figure out the sequence.”
“Why? You don’t need me. You got here all by yourself, I should have just stayed-”
Suddenly she went rigid and cut him off with a shush. "-Did you hear that? It sounded like a sizzle."
He sighed. "Yes, that's my trip wire.” The control box chirped loudly, signalling that another ring connection had been lost. "I give you your extra four minutes, you're welcome. As soon as somebody activated the jump to that ring, a power surge fried the connection.”
"Oof," she said, grimacing. “That means somebody got launched backwards.”
"Like a slingshot, yes." He motioned her toward the control box. “Better them than us. Come along, let’s take the maintenance ring. And just so you know, we're not done. You're getting an earful when we get back."
"Yeah yeah," she said, retying her wrap around her waist as she followed him to the active maintenance ring. “What about the sequence?”
“Quit going on about the damn sequence!" he snapped as she climbed up to straddle the ring. "I got us enough juice to jump farther than the next station, just go already!”
She stuck her tongue out just before she fell through. As he climbed the ring after her, he activated the timer on the display of the cylinder then jumped as well. He dropped through the Warp, not onto another bridge platform but onto violet sand a mere twenty meters away from the Hubris, a freighter ship they called home. The portal disappeared above him with a loud crack and a bright blue flash against the dark sky.
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