FALAHA'S JOURNEY: A Spacegirl's Account in Three Movements

Episode #13

After a few grueling hours and a quick visit to the closest bathroom via the same route, I finally got to take a short rest while Eyuran was unscrewing one of the wall plates for us to get out. This time he was aiming for the maintenance trail. There we could catch our breath and secretly observe the cargo bay.

Everything remained quiet, so after our break we continued to advance. The huge hall welcomed us with countless crates and machine racks. This place had a fresh smell of machines. Some of the crates were open. I went up to one of them. It wasn't like anything I'd seen before.

"Eyuran," I addressed his Node. "What was in this one?"

He came closer and studied the huge case, which was easily twice the height of an adult Danna and had body slots for some kind of gear.

"I don't know for sure. I haven't seen this before. It resembles a gearbot sarx, but those are usually larger. Must be a new, compact model." Observing the empty sarx, a wave of bad feelings came over me.

"I also saw some of the weapon crates with broken locks."

"If someone is operating a gearbot, a bunch of guns will be the least of our worries. A hull repairer can't even begin to compete with the power of an assault exomachine." He looked around and frowned. "By the way, the whole hull repairer rack is empty. Counting the one you took out, we should have seven more roaming somewhere on the ship."

The thought that operating a gearbot requires integration with soma hit me and was more disturbing than the idea of going against all those hull repairers. Medas was known as one of the places without soma. This left us with two possibilities: either there was someone lucky among the Medans with a rare feature, or there was a traitor among our own people. At least the latter would explain how fast everything had happened. Danna never traded weapons. They also never built weapons for anyone else. All our gear was initially designed for civil use, save for several special models for the Search and Rescue Forces. Assault and Defense models began appearing only after the Hunter Encounter.

Eyuran walked further, silently inviting me to follow with his hand.

"All gearbots are usually placed over there." Blinking arrows near the innermost wall of the bay marked the location in my siSystem. "There are some there right now, in fact."

"Shall we borrow one?"

"Can you operate it?" we asked simultaneously, as we stopped and looked at each other. I shook my head. Eyuran nodded his.

"Probably. I have experience with rescue machines, though not with combat ones."

"Is there anything else we can use?"

Before he could answer, we shuddered at a loud male voice with a distinguished Medan accent echoing above our heads, "Hey, Baro, I thought your team had cleaned up all areas! Where did these little parasites come from?"

The sound of a released shutter made us slowly turn around.