“So I think we’ve got the navigational compu–”

The only thing that saved Colonel Moody’s life was the delay while the black-suited humanoid tried to step around the fuel mixture station. Moo caught it by the wrist. A stark flash filled the room as the intruder’s weapon fired into the ceiling. The intruder suffered a broken back after Moo’s a violent shoulder throw. The next one through the door took a center of mass impact from Yili’s blaster. It screamed and wheeled back into the hall. The engineer scrambled down off the deck officer’s platform and drew her other weapon. By the time she arrived, the second intruder was down and surrounded by smoke.

“They’re using the same technology we did to get over here,” Yili exhaled. “We can expect more of them.” A console on the platform began beeping insistently and Yili hurried back to her station. Moo relieved the two men of their weapons and commlinks.

“Soon as we find Diamonds again I want her to run an analysis on these things.” He showed Yili what he had found. “If they’re broadcasting or receiving, I want to know who they are calling, where and why.”

“We’re on final approach,” Curtiss said as she watched the readouts carefully. The hull cameras on the starboard side of the ship showed the shadow of Dunkerque’s hull gradually covering the station’s hard lock.

“Sixty yards.”

Moo looked up and around. Something was bothering him and he wasn’t entirely sure what it was.

“Do you hear that?”

“Fifty yards.”

The colonel climbed down off the platform and went back to the fuel mixture station. A faint beeping sound was just scarcely audible over the hum of the strike cruiser’s maneuvering engines.

“Forty yards.”

Finally Moo found what he was looking for, and it wasn’t good news.

“Lieutenant, we’ve got a problem over here!”

“I can’t leave the deck station unless we abort, Colonel!”

“It looks like an explosive device of some kind. My guess is it’s armed and on its way to detonating. These two knuckleheads must have been planting it when we weren’t looking.”

“Describe it to me!”

Moo was well aware of Yili’s orbital combat engineering training. If she could disarm it...

“Aluminum casing. About the size of a Thanksgiving turkey. Control mechanism on one end. No markings. Looks like the case is designed to hold six cylindrical objects of some kind! Readout says eighty four seconds!”

“Any wires visible?!”

“Negative!”

“Is it magnetically fastened to a surface or loose?”

“It’s attached to the wall!”

“Understood! Sounds like a kettle bomb! I can disarm it as soon as we dock!”

“We may not have that much time, Yili! We’ve got 71 seconds left! We could be endangering the station! Can we abort and re-approach?” Moo rushed over to the deck platform to see if there would be time to get the Dunkerque away from the station before the bomb went off.

“Even if I abort now we can’t get far enough away to save the station. I’ll have 30 seconds after we dock. More than enough time. I’ll disarm it.” Curtiss’ face was sincere. It wasn’t often the other Jacks saw her like this. Most of the time she was head down in some kind of crazy mechanism. But the look on her face now was different somehow.

“I’m trusting you,” Moo said softly. “If that thing goes off in a room full of fusion reactors with us bolted to the hard lock it could blow this whole asteroid into a dust cloud.”

“Understood, sir,” the engineer replied. “Our guests gave me 30 seconds, and 30 seconds is a long, long time for a combat engineer.”

A moment later, the proximity clamps sounded their high-pitched warning alarms. A vibration in the Dunkerque’s hull armor caused a low pitched rumble to reverberate through the ship. A couple of seconds later, the sound of a bank vault door closing echoed, followed by eight slamming sounds as the metal clamps activated around the cruiser’s docking ring. Yili scrambled down the ladder and grabbed a portable toolkit and a pair of goggles.

“Colonel! There’s an emergency egress airlock at the far end of reactor four! That’s where I’m running. Could you kindly hit the evacuation alarm? Black button, fourth from the right edge, console two, under the display for hull camera eleven!”

Moo climbed the ladder in one bound and scanned the console. It seemed there were at least a thousand little knobs and switches all over it. He was suddenly overwhelmed by his lack of technical experience. Then he saw the display and quickly looked down. He rammed the heel of his hand against the black button and looked up as the deck alarm sounded. Red emergency lights began spinning.

Yili caught a glimpse of the display. Nineteen seconds left. She lit her plasma torch and slipped the goggles on with her other hand. Like a surgeon on a battlefield, she went to work on the upper corner of the explosive device’s casing. The torch vaporized the thin metal instantly, exposing the hard chemical rods underneath. Pieces of red hot aluminum dripped to the floor as Yili reached inside the device with a pair of precision machine grips.

Moo wiped his brow. He wasn’t used to being completely out of his element, but to be fair, there was absolutely nothing he could do except make sure another attack didn’t leave Yili with ten broken fingers.

There was a snapping sound and a spray of sparks.

“That’s it! Ten seconds!” Yili scrambled to her feet and yanked the device off the wall. She and Moo ran headlong across the engineering bay while the clock ticked down from nine.

“Open it!”

Moo slammed both hands against the activation bar. The door sprinted open and Yili tossed the smoke-trailing and sparking device into the outer airlock. The door resealed with three seconds on the readout. An instant later the hull door was torn into scrap metal by the pressure differential and the bomb rocketed into space at nearly 200 miles an hour.

The cruiser’s deckplates rattled as the bomb detonated at a range of 150 yards. The firebloom filled the engineering section with orange light.

Yili exhaled and handed Moo her goggles. “Engineering reports device neutralized, sir.”

The colonel smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Nicely done. What do you say we power us up a gun?”

“Don’t you have anything more challenging for me?”