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Katherine didn't like this.

They'd been finding bodies all the way to the engineering door, mangled bodies, throats ripped, necks snapped. Not quite in as bad a shape as she'd expected them to be, considering Tristan had been the one to kill them, but she'd expected to run into him by now, but he wasn't here, and Ruefield had confirmed that the door hadn't been opened. So where was he?

She Glanced at Coppernic. She had turned jumpy, she and Friday had stayed as far away from the bodies as they could. Friday had even shot one who'd had a last twitch. If the two of them had become squeamish, they wouldn't be any good to her after this. Still, the young woman had stayed on top of their safety.

"Do you still have control of the cameras?"

"Yes, their coercionist isn't coming out of his hiding place and the antibodies are easy to deal with. I have everything running on a loop with no one in it."

"Any sign of Alex?"

"No, he hasn't shown up either."

She nodded and went back to watching her people place the explosives on the door. Ruefield had been annoyed he couldn't just bypass the lock to get him, but the people on the other side would be expecting that, and pay attention to the lock's state. She wanted to surprise them completely.

That meant She'd kept Jurran away from the door. He was in no state to do careful work. He'd yelled at her and she'd worried the people inside engineering would hear him, but Coppernic reassured her that short of banging on the door, they couldn't hear anything.

So her people were working slowly, careful not to knock the door as they installed the breaching charges.

"Boss, can I ask you a question?" Coppernic was dividing her attention between her datapad and the door.

Katherine nodded.

"They control the ship, so why don't they just vent it? They're secured in there. They could override the airlock security, open them and we're dead. I might be able to keep a handful of them closed, but there's no way I can control enough of them to keep this level from venting. Even getting in a room wouldn't save us, they have control of the life support system too. They could just suck the air out."

Katherine looked behind them, at their prisoner. "At a guess, that Baran doesn't want her dead. Which either supports her story that she's being used for the information she has, but then again, she could be a valued ally."

"She was tied up."

"Alex did that. So it doesn't help. We'll find out the truth soon enough. I want her out of the direct line of fire but close enough to use as a bargaining chip if it comes to that."

"You think Tristan wants her?"

Katherine chuckled. "No, it was Alex who tied her and even him I don't think his reason for doing that was because he liked her. They're both cold-blooded killers. I'm guessing he's as curious as to her part in this as I am, and he tied her up so he could come back and question her afterward."

"Then we can use her against them too?"

"No. Tristan doesn't negotiate. He kills everything that's around him and then takes what he wants. If we put her between him and us, he's going to shoot us through her. So we shoot at everyone in there."

The woman by the door gave Katherine the signal they were done. In turn she signaled the other to take cover. She pulled Coppernic into the closest room. "Wait until we're all in, then find a safe spot and see if you can get control of the ship. That's the one way we can ensure control of the situation."

She put on the anti flash-bang goggles and ear plugs and nodded to the woman with the detonator.

She didn't see the flash of the explosion, the goggles canceled it out, or hear it, but she felt it through the floor and wall she leaned against, and saw the debris fly off in the corridor.

Suppression fire came from inside the room. After a few seconds it slowed since they weren't being fired back on. It was when the flash-bangs were thrown in.

She didn't see or hear them go off, but the screams of pain came in clearly. Jurran was in the room before she could step into the corridor, followed by her experienced people. She went in with them and the younger ones followed. Friday would stay at the rear with their prisoner.

She fired at anyone who wasn't one of hers. The flash of the blaster didn't register because of the goggles so she pointed, fired and a hole appeared in her target's chest, limbs or head.

Because she didn't see the blaster shots, she had a clear view of the room, large, much larger than she expected and containing much more people than she planned on. Most of whom also had goggles on. They'd either been far enough not to be affected, or fast enough to put them on before the flash-bang went off.

She moved carefully, shooting anyone who aimed at her. There was nothing to take cover behind, everything was around the room. This wasn't like any engineering room she'd ever been in. Usually they were filled with machinery that did only engineers knew what. Still, all running did was throw your aim off, so she moved carefully, looking for anyone who might be in charge as she fired.

The people opposing her, she noted, seemed to be only men, were well trained, and their superior numbers gave them the advantage. She didn't like this. She'd expected two dozen of them at most, but this was four or five times that at least. Even if they killed them one for one, she was losing this battle. And she couldn't look around to see how many of her people were still alive.

She was about to concede defeat and order her people to retreat when she noticed a commotion deeper in the room, in the middle of her opponents. She took off the goggles and flash of blasters came from there. She couldn't tell who was firing at whom, but as more of the men realized what was going on an empty space formed around the new attackers and she made out a black furry head towering over them.

She looked up and found the hole in the ceiling. The two of them had dropped in the middle and were killing without restraint. She smiled. They'd dropped exactly where she wanted them. By the time they went through those men, Tristan would be exhausted and she'd kill him.

She kept firing at anyone who was paying her too much attention; and anyone else she had the opportunity, but chaos was slowly seeping into her opponents. They hadn't planned for a battle from two fronts, even less of the new arrivals to be this deadly.

The circle widened as Tristan and Alex moved apart. Tristan was moving away, deeper into the room and she almost cursed, except he wasn't running away, what he wanted was in that direction.

Alex was moving toward her, the flash of his gun keeping anyone away. Fine, she'd kill him first. She owed him anyway.