Chapter 2 - Secrets, Steel, and Suspicion

  The workers stood in a somewhat uneven line, boots scraping against the rough metal grating that formed the landing platform. From this close, the warship loomed above them like a predator, its sleek hull gleaming coldly under the harsh floodlights.

  Darius blinked curiously up at the hull, checking out the precision-made seams between the panels, barely visible beneath a matte black coating. He’d never been this close to a warship before, and it was humbling and a little scary to see. For all that he may dislike the Empire, he had to admit they made some pretty cool-looking ships.

  “Thinking of making that your next ride?” Finn asked, nudging Darius with his elbow. “You’d look real nice behind the controls of a death machine like that. All you’d need is a nice, shiny helmet and a total lack of common sense.”

  Darius snorted, unwilling to admit he had just been admiring the ship. “Right. Because I’m just dying to cruise around in an overcompensating chunk of metal with the Empire’s finest breathing down my neck.”

  Finn grinned. “Well, you’ve got the ‘overcompensating’ part down. Maybe they’d even throw in a fancy uniform to go with your smart mouth.”

  “Yeah, I’ll pass on the Imperial makeover, thanks.”

  They fell silent for a moment, both of them staring up at the ship. The lights from the platform threw long shadows across its surface, highlighting the ship’s sleek, flawless exterior. Something about that didn’t sit right with Darius.

  He frowned, narrowing his eyes as he looked closer. “You notice something odd?”

  “Other than you getting all dreamy-eyed over an Empire warship?” Finn quipped.

  “Funny. No, seriously, look – there’s no damage. I mean, not on the outside. This thing looks like it just came off the production line.” He pointed to the gleaming panels, all perfectly aligned, without a single dent or scratch. “But they’ve got half the yard working on it. That doesn’t add up.”

  Finn squinted, following Darius’s gaze. “Huh. You’re right. Maybe they took a hit to the systems,” he suggested, lowering his voice. “Power grid failure, navigational errors, maybe something scrambled their comms. Could explain why they’re being so tight-lipped.”

  “Could be,” Darius replied, absently rubbing his jaw. “Or maybe there was some kind of accident. Malfunction in the reactor, a misfire in the weapons systems.”

  Finn snorted. “Or the captain got a little too friendly with the self-destruct button. Happens to the best of ‘em.”

  “Don’t let them catch you saying that – they might lock you up for treason.”

  The remark got him a flat look from his friend. “I don’t want to hear anything about watching my mouth from you, of all people.”

  “Ha! Fair enough.” Darius chuckled.

  Ahead of them, a boarding ramp jutted out from the ship’s underbelly, its edges lined with pale blue guide lights that flickered sporadically. An entire squad of armed guards was standing at the base of the ramp, checking each worker as they came in, poking through bags and toolkits like they expected to find a bomb in every socket wrench. They wore the standard-issue dark armour of the Empire, visors down, weapons holstered but within easy reach.

  Despite the caution the guards were showing, the line moved swiftly, and it wasn’t long before Darius and Finn were standing at the base of the ramp, looking up into the bowels of the ship.

  The guard in front of him waved a handheld scanner over Darius’s chest, the green light flickering briefly. Darius held his breath for a moment, resisting the urge to fidget. It wasn’t that he had anything to hide—he didn’t—but there was always something unsettling about standing in front of armed guards while they decided whether you were a threat or not.

  He’d mouthed off to patrols, sure, but this was different. One wrong move here, one smart comment, and he wouldn’t be dealing with some bored local security team – these were the types of people that could make you disappear for good.

  Thankfully, the scanner beeped and the guard waved him through without a word. Darius exhaled and followed the others up the ramp, the steady hum of the warship’s systems growing louder as they stepped into its belly.

  “Not every day we get to work on one of these,” Finn muttered as he fell in beside Darius.

  Around them, the other workers were already spreading out, chattering excitedly or exchanging quick glances as they took in the ship’s interior. Metal walls gleamed under the bright overhead lights, and the air had that sterile, polished smell of something that hadn’t seen much use yet. No rust. No oil stains. Just the sharp tang of too-new machinery.

  “Alright, everyone gather up!” Finn called, clapping his hands together to get their attention. A few stragglers jogged over, and Darius took his spot in the small group Finn had corralled.

  “Let’s keep it simple,” Finn said, his voice all business now. “We’ve got work orders for lighting diagnostics, power distribution, and checking the systems on Deck 4. We’ll split into teams. Don’t get distracted by all the shiny bits, alright? It’s still a job, so let’s do it right.”

  Darius couldn’t help but grin. It wasn’t often Finn took things seriously, but when he did, he made a decent supervisor. Maybe it was because Finn could walk the line between shooting the breeze and actually getting the work done.

  “You, you, and you—lighting,” Finn said, pointing to Darius and two others. “Split up and check for any power surges or irregularities. If something’s flickering, I want to know why. Got it?”

  Darius gave him a mock salute. “Aye, aye, boss.”

  Finn smirked. “Don’t make me regret putting you on the important stuff.”

  Darius rolled his eyes but didn’t bother verbally responding. Flickering lights. So very important.

  As the group dispersed to their assignments, Darius grabbed his toolkit and made his way toward the lighting systems. The halls were quiet as he moved deeper into the ship, though the hum of the warship’s power core was a constant background noise. If he was honest, it was kind of nice working on something that wasn’t already halfway to falling apart. Sure, the mining rigs had their charm, but a warship? This was the kind of thing they didn’t get to touch often.

  It didn’t take him long to reach his section, the lighting control panel embedded in the wall standing out like an old friend. He cracked open his toolkit, pulling out a few necessary tools before popping off the panel’s front cover with practised ease. The internals were in perfect condition, as expected – no corrosion, no jury-rigged repairs, just smooth, efficient design. He tapped a few buttons on his handheld console and watched as the system blinked to life, running a diagnostic on the lights for this deck.

  As the data started streaming in, Darius frowned. The numbers were off. According to the readings, there were fluctuations across several sections of the ship – nothing massive, but definitely weird. The power draw for the lights was fluctuating, spiking randomly for no apparent reason.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Darius muttered, leaning closer to the screen. It wasn’t enough to cause an actual problem, but it was the kind of thing that could lead to more significant issues if left unchecked.

  And possibly already had, considering how many workers had been assigned to the vessel, not to mention that Caldera IV’s shipyards were really not designed to cater to this class of ship. There was no way of knowing for sure – not without asking the sorts of questions that would get him noticed – but he suspected this was an emergency stop-off for the warship.

  The ongoing war with the Xenos might tangentially affect frontier colonies like Caldera IV, but the vast majority of the fighting was on the opposite side of the Empire. An advanced ship like this shouldn’t have any reason to be this far from the front, let alone in need of extensive maintenance like this.

  Darius shook his head, refocusing on his task. He was hardly qualified to comment on the military deployments of the Empire’s forces. Instead, he turned his attention to tracing the wiring on the screen, trying to isolate where the fluctuations were coming from. The results were frustratingly inconclusive.

  “Conduits look fine,” he muttered to himself, running a hand over the nearby cables. No loose connections, no signs of damage. Everything here was textbook perfect—at least on the hardware side. But something was definitely wrong.

  Darius tapped a few more commands into his console, trying to pull up a more detailed readout, and then leaned back with a sigh. “Maybe it’s the software?”

  It wouldn’t be the first time the ship’s software was to blame. Sometimes, when a system this new was put through its paces, bugs popped up that no one had accounted for yet. It could be a simple issue with the lighting protocols, an overlooked glitch in the programming. He made a mental note to flag it for later and moved to close the panel when, suddenly, a loud hiss echoed from the far end of the corridor.

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  Darius turned, eyes narrowing as he saw one of the sealed doors at the end of the hallway slide open with a smooth, mechanical whirr. The flickering lights continued on the other side, casting faint, erratic shadows across the bulkheads. For a second, he considered calling it in—no reason to go poking around where he wasn’t assigned.

  Then again… he always had been too curious for his own good.

  “Let’s see what’s going on over there,” he muttered.

  He packed up his tools, slid the panel back into place, and headed for the now-open door. The hallway beyond was darker, the lights flickering more severely here, casting the corridor in an eerie, pulsing glow.

  Darius approached one of the panels, setting down his toolkit with a resigned sigh. “Let’s see what we’ve got this time,” he muttered, tapping the panel and prepping it for another diagnostic. Before he could get further, though, a loud hiss echoed from behind him, followed by the unmistakable sound of the door sliding shut.

  He froze for a second, then spun around. The door he’d just come through was sealed tight.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Darius groaned. He walked back over and waved his hand in front of the control pad. Nothing. He tried it again—same result. Frowning, he tapped a few commands on his console, but the panel’s diagnostics came back with nothing useful. The door was stuck.

  “Perfect,” he muttered sarcastically, running his hand through his hair. “I might’ve just managed to get myself stuck on a warship. Great.”

  With a sigh, Darius rubbed his temples. He should’ve known better than to wander into a section with flickering lights and malfunctioning doors, but in fairness, it was kind of his job. First things first, he tapped his augs, pulling up the comms interface. Of course, this being his luck, his augs had only just been reset earlier, and everything was still acting a little slow.

  Darius winced as the delay in the interface felt like it was moving at half speed. He could hear a faint static hiss in his ears before the line finally connected.

  “Hey, Finn,” Darius called through the comms, his voice tinged with annoyance. “I’ve got a small problem.”

  Finn’s voice crackled through the static. “Please tell me you haven’t broken anything yet.”

  Darius rolled his eyes, pacing back to the sealed door. “I wish. I’m stuck. The door shut behind me, and it won’t open.”

  For a beat, there was silence on the line before Finn’s chuckle broke through. “Of course, you got yourself stuck. You really can’t help it, huh?”

  “Yeah, laugh it up,” Darius grumbled. “Seriously, though, what do I do? I’m gonna try opening the door manually, but this whole place is acting weird.”

  Finn’s amusement was still evident in his voice. “Hold off on that for a sec. Let me check with the officer in charge of this section. Maybe it’s just a security lock or something.”

  While he waited, he tried giving the control panel another irritated poke. Of course, nothing happened. Typical.

  A few moments later, Finn’s voice came back, now mixed with a bit of static. “Alright, checked with the big guy. They said it’s just a glitch, nothing critical. As long as you’re not near any sensitive areas, the doors you run into shouldn’t be on lockdown. So, you should be able to just follow the doors until you find your way back.”

  Darius raised an eyebrow. “Just follow the doors?”

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s not like the ship is a maze or anything. Any doors leading to restricted areas or anything important are deadlocked, so there’s no risk of you stumbling into the reactor or anything. You’ll be fine.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one wandering around while the lights are doing their haunted house impression,” Darius said, eyeing the flickering lights ahead.

  Before he could complain more, another door further down the corridor opened with a soft hiss. The lights beyond it seemed to flicker even more, casting strange shadows across the bulkheads.

  “Well, there’s my next door,” Darius muttered. “Guess I’m taking the scenic route.”

  “Good luck, buddy,” Finn said with barely suppressed laughter. “Let me know if you run into any… uh, more doors.”

  “Oh, you’re hilarious,” Darius shot back before closing the comm link.

  With a resigned sigh, he started walking toward the newly opened door, muttering to himself about faulty Imperial tech and making a mental note to get back at Finn later for his “helpful” attitude.

  Shockingly enough, the door opened out into… another corridor, stretching off into the distance. Shocking stuff, really. Darius looked back at the first door he had come through, but it remained stubbornly shut.

  He almost wasn’t surprised when another door hissed open further down the corridor. He shrugged. Not like there was anything he could do about the situation, and he had gotten permission, technically, so he should be in the clear.

  Darius kept walking, doors sliding open just as he approached and shutting behind him with a soft hiss each time. He’d taken at least four turns by now, and the ship seemed to be directing him somewhere. Every time he thought he might hit a dead end, another door opened up, almost like the ship was… helping him along. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  “Is this a faulty VI trying to direct me somewhere or something?” he muttered, half-joking to himself as the next door swished open. The lights overhead flickered again, but not in any particularly concerning way—just enough to remind him that the power on this ship wasn’t quite as perfect as it should be.

  As he walked, the hum of the ship’s systems became a comforting background noise, filling the silence of the mostly empty corridors. He had to admit, there was something kind of fascinating about it all. The ship’s internal design was so sleek and well-maintained that it was hard to believe anything could actually be wrong. Maybe it was just software glitches messing with the lights, and he was getting worked up over nothing.

  There were no major alarms, no emergency protocols going off – just the occasional pulse of the overhead lighting and the distant sound of machinery chugging along, keeping the ship alive. If the officers in charge were nervous about something on this ship, they sure hadn’t passed that along to the repair crew.

  As he continued through the twisting corridors, Darius found himself glancing over at the panels on the walls. Most of them were in pristine condition, though a few displayed some minor error codes – nothing that screamed “danger,” but enough to make him wonder if the ship was being less cooperative than it looked on the surface. The random power fluctuations were still happening too, and he could feel a faint vibration in the floor.

  That actually was a little concerning. A ship this size shouldn’t be vibrating unless something was drawing a lot of power, and even then, the inertial dampeners were supposed to take care of those things.

  He was pretty sure, anyway. It wasn’t like the mining or salvage ships he usually worked on were sophisticated enough to have systems like that, so for all he knew this was perfectly normal.

  Besides, you know, the potentially intelligent doors that were leading him somewhere.

  A few more turns and another door slid open in front of him, revealing a new section. This one was different from the others—larger, more reinforced. Darius raised an eyebrow as he approached. The door’s edges were thicker, clearly designed for something important, and the faint glow of red warning lights caught his eye from just beyond it.

  “Hmm. Not good,” he muttered, coming to a stop just outside. He could barely make out what was inside—it was dark, and the flickering lights weren’t doing much to help. He stepped closer, peering in.

  For the first time since he’d started following the ship’s path, Darius hesitated. He didn’t have a torch, and that room was pitch black. No lights meant no diagnostics, no clue what was going on in there. And stepping into a dark room on an Imperial warship wasn’t exactly at the top of his to-do list, especially when he had no idea what that room was for.

  He glanced back at the door he’d just come through, fully expecting to see it wide open, ready to let him retreat. It wasn’t. It had shut the second he’d stepped into the threshold of this new corridor, leaving him trapped between the unknown and a very, very closed door.

  “Well, that’s just great.”

  He considered calling Finn for help, but the idea of getting teased for wandering into the ship’s depths, led by nothing but malfunctioning doors, was… not appealing. Finn would never let him live that down.

  Besides, all the other doors had opened up ahead of him so far, and in the worst-case scenario, he could call Finn later. No need to panic yet.

  “I’m sure nothing could possibly go wrong,” he muttered, well aware he was tempting fate. “Let’s see what this is about.”

  With a deep breath, Darius stepped into the dark room. As soon as he crossed the threshold, the lights buzzed to life with a jarring flicker, flooding the room with a harsh, sterile brightness.

  Darius blinked, his heart sinking the moment he realized where he was.

  The reactor room.

  “Aw, crap.”

  This was definitely not where he was supposed to be. Reactor rooms were some of the most heavily restricted areas on any warship, and he—an unauthorized civilian repair worker—had just waltzed in like it was no big deal. The walls were lined with complex systems monitoring the reactor’s status. The flickering screens were... probably not a good sign. And right in the centre of it all was the ship’s central reactor core, humming with barely-contained energy.

  “Okay, now I might actually be in trouble.”

  Before he could retreat, the door behind him slammed shut with a metallic thunk. Darius rushed back to the door, frantically tapping at the panel. But it didn’t respond. The door had sealed itself, hard and fast.

  “Really? Really?!”

  He tapped his augs, opening up the comms line. “Finn, I—”

  Static. Nothing but static.

  Of course. This room was shielded and reinforced against any potential damage, meaning his communications were effectively blocked. It was one of the more vulnerable areas of any ship, which was why security protocols were so strict.

  Darius took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. “Okay, don’t freak out. There’s gotta be an emergency override in here somewhere,” he muttered, scanning the room for anything that might help.

  He moved cautiously, keeping his hands close to his body, wary of accidentally touching anything. Sure, he was a technician, but this was miles beyond what he was used to working with. Mining ships and salvage rigs were one thing, but this? This was the heart of the warship, the power source for everything, and he didn’t want to be the idiot who blew himself up by pressing the wrong button.

  Not to mention that the chances of him being arrested grew exponentially if he actually touched anything. Being in here at all was already going to be tricky enough to explain; he didn’t need to be accused of sabotage on top of espionage.

  His eyes swept the room. There had to be a manual release or an emergency exit protocol, right? The Empire couldn’t be that paranoid. He approached a nearby console, hoping for some kind of door control.

  But something else caught his eye.

  The panel in front of him was… leaking.

  “What the hell?” Darius crouched down to get a better look. A strange, metallic fluid was seeping from the edges of one of the screens, pooling in small, shimmering droplets on the surface of the console. It looked almost like mercury, but thicker, moving with an unsettling fluidity.

  Curiosity, against his better judgment, won out. He reached toward the fluid, fingers just brushing the surface.

  And then it moved.

  The liquid jumped, surging toward his hand with startling speed. Darius yanked his arm back, but it was too late—the fluid latched onto his fingers, crawling up his hand like it was alive. His breath hitched as the cold, metallic substance spread across his skin, shimmering as it moved.

  “What the—?”

  He tried to shake it off, but it clung to him, climbing higher. Panic flared as the strange liquid seemed to burrow into his skin, sending a tingling sensation up his arm. It wasn’t painful, but it was unlike anything he’d ever felt before.

  He stumbled backwards into another console, spinning to try and scrape whatever the hell this was off his arm, but to his horror there was more of the fluid pooling on this console as well.

  Before he could react, it lunged at him, a silver wave of liquid metal racing toward his chest. Darius tried to twist away, but his feet tangled beneath him, and he crashed into the floor hard. His breath came in ragged gasps as the strange substance crept further up his arm, cold and relentless.

  More of the fluid spilled from the console, slithering toward him. It moved faster now, almost eager, like it had a purpose.

  Darius scrambled backward, heart pounding in his chest, but there was nowhere to go.

  With a sudden surge, the fluid leapt.

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