Андреа Хёст - The Starfighter Invitation

" This floor doesn’t look residential ," Nina said, as we resumed our slow-and-silent progress down endless hallways.

" Fewer doors ," Silent agreed. " Wider corridors, as well. Ceremonial? Administrative? " He paused to peer through the nearest open doorway. " Tidier, too. Less floating chaff. "

" There is a window ," Imoenne noted, and we turned to the half-open door she floated before.

Inside, a portion of floor glowed faintly. I’d assumed it was a lighted platform, but as I craned to see past the others, something flickered beyond. We pried the door open, and peered down into a vast echoing space. A distant central sphere looked deceptively small, but was likely larger than the ship that brought us to The Wreck. Between it and us were two sets of rings of some dark purplish substance, oscillating lazily. When the rings came near each other, there were flickers, some sort of electrical arcing.

" The engine room? " Nina said. " Possibly the control room is beyond ."

" No bridges ," I said. The rings might be moving slowly, but it didn’t look at all safe to fly through them.

Silent pressed as close to the window as his helmet would allow, craning to see more of the area immediately around us. " I can see several probable access points. Judging from their spacing, we want to look for a right turn off our current corridor. "

Rather than move off immediately, we lingered at the window searching for details. The slow revolution of the rings didn’t change, but the arcing wasn’t conveniently conforming to a pattern we could avoid.

" Speed might be our only option ," Silent said. " Dash through the first set, pause, dash through the second set. Hope we don’t get unlucky. "

" Or we could find a control system to shut it down ," Nina suggested.

" Turning off the power altogether might do bad things ," I said.

Silent rapped on the thick stuff of the window, then pushed himself gently away from it. " We can debate after finding the nearest opening, or control panel, or other interesting development. I’ve asked Amelia to check around, see if anyone’s had any Challenges shielding against electricity rather than whatever goes into those blaster bolts. But we need to push on ."

We moved as quickly as we dared, and were fortunate to almost immediately be presented with a massive floor hatch coloured a livid purple shade, with lines of striped black and red on either side.

" Danger: Keep Out? " I suggested.

" A control panel on either side of the room ," Silent observed. " Probably simultaneous activation as a safety precaution ."

" I will help with this one ," Arlen volunteered, swimming right. " The largest of the buttons? "

Silent hesitated. " Sensible people would make the largest button the emergency close ," he said. " Try the next largest, the one to its right. On three. "

I followed Imoenne and Nina in pushing away from the hatch to float in the corners of the room, shields up. Silent counted, and the button press produced a stuttering sound, which might once have been a warning claxon to accompany the slow lifting of the hatch.

After so much gloom, the glare of the engine room set my eyes stinging. The window we’d been looking through must have been polarised.

" Stay back until our eyes adjust ," Nina warned. " And we’re sure no arcing comes through the hatch. "

" Which do you think would be better for the crossing—having the Renba at a distance, or have them resting on us? " I asked.

This debate gave our eyes plenty of time to adjust, and when the pause produced no play of electricity through the opening, we edged closer and looked down again.

I felt sick. We’d avoided trouble by running careful and quiet, which was not a strategy for lightning. Somehow we would have to pass the three outer rings, and the three inner rings, all of them rotating independently, with no visible pivot points. They were around a half a metre thick, and the rings within the sets passed within a foot of each other, with the electrical sparking appearing wherever all three rings currently intersected.

" Give it five minutes' observation ?" Silent suggested. " We can’t risk this without a better idea of the patterns. "

" There could be lot going on in that room that we just can’t see ," Nina said.

Silent detached a used oxygen canister from his sled, waited for an opportune moment, and then threw. The canister sailed directly through the gap in the first set of rings, veered abruptly right, and shot off toward the outer rings once again. It struck one, made a small frizzling sound, and bounced back to the region between the two ring sets, losing momentum enough that it began to drift.

" If we didn’t have a vat of magic goo waiting for us, I wouldn’t advocate going anywhere into that ," Silent said. " I’m sure it’s not healthy, but I’d guess that we’re not looking at immediate fatality unless we hit a ring. But to be sure, we’d best send one person first as a scout. "

" Draw lots for that ," Nina said.

Brief consultation produced a random number generator buried in the [Group] menu. " Lowest goes first ," Silent said, and promptly rolled a ninety-eight. I rolled a three.

" I’ll leave my Renba here ," I said, keeping myself brisk because I was scared. I positioned my sled, but waited out a cycle of the rings while I decided what to do about sharp turns. " Count me down so that one is just before the rings would clear in front of us. "

" Good luck ," Silent said, sounding stifled, probably because he’d thought he’d be taking this risk himself.

[[Try not to embarrass me,]] Dio added.

I pulled a face, but smiled at the same time, because the words had been a transparent ploy to distract me. Reminding myself that I’d wanted to be first to unlock a puzzle, for all that I’d never bargained on a millions-strong audience for my attempts, I narrowed my focus to the simple act. Five, four, three, two, Go.

There was no need for split-second timing: the rings moved slowly, and the gaps were wide. I zipped easily through the opening with no trouble, and then slowed to a crawl, bracing myself for whatever had caused that change in direction, my eyes narrowed almost to the point where I couldn’t see. I wanted to feel, react to my internal reads, and not confuse myself with the dizzying cycle all around me.

Something grabbed me by the spine and pulled. I juiced the impellers, doing my best to slow, to not be pushed back to the rings and zapped. It seemed to work. It was like swimming against a current, but I could keep my speed down and once I had that under control, I pushed toward the central point between the sets of rings. Here, the current seemed to be absent, so I paused, wondering whether to repeat Silent’s manoeuvre of throwing an old oxygen canister.

" We need to know how the Renba react to this stuff ," I said, calling it to me as the gap above me rotated into position.

The same swerve. So Renba weren’t immune to the current, though my silver bird recovered more quickly than I had managed, and zoomed down to rest on the top of my helmet. I turned my attention back to the lower ring set, and sent my Renba ahead.

" The drag past the second ring looks stronger ," Nina said, after my bird had veered sharply left, then corrected and dropped to become a mote against the hull of the sphere below.

I nodded, a pointless gesture in my suit, and then made some small adjustments in position so that I would be exactly centred over one of the points where the three rings crossed and gaped. Three. Two. One .