The gore slicked tools were a bust. Whatever the dead crewman had been planning to do after he finished out hosing the filthy hold out, it hadn’t involved cutting through a security bulkhead. Rene felt his tension rising, if the crewmen forward of the hatch had enough skill to get the plasma motors lit the backwash might be enough to kill Solae. There was beyond doubt equipment he could use to breach the door but he might or might not be able to find it in time. Without another option to hand he stood and ran back towards the engineering section of the ship.

In its way the engineering station was just as bad as the filthy hold had been. A large, two story hexagonal chamber surrounded the lowering bulk of a fusion bottle. The bottle was old and flecked with rust, condensate ran down its surface in slow rivulets that made the air feel unbearably humid. The air stank of half decomposed lubricants and hot electronics as well as the sour stink of long unwashed bodies. Pipes and conduits and nests of wiring came of the housing of the fusion plant like cilia from an amoeba. Ladders led up to a second story gantry which circled the upper half of the fusion bottle. Half disassembled machines were scattered on benches and on the decking, some obviously abandoned junk, others only presumably so. Trash, empty liquor bottles and half eaten containers of food lay in mouldering heaps, adding to the stink. Dozens of screens were affixed to the conduit wrapped walls, some of them showing read outs from the power plant and ships systems, others showing scenes of holo porn that ranged in tone from improbable to insane.

Cursing Rene plunged through the trash, searching for a tool locker. If this was how the ship normally operated, and the mold covering several half eaten fast food packages gave him no reason to doubt it, he couldn’t imagine how the Bonaventure hadn’t caught fire and been lost years ago. Amid a half sheared piece of hull plating he found a diamond cutting bar. The teeth looked to be worn down to almost nothing but it was the best he could find. A cutting bar was a high speed rotary saw used for making quick and dirty cuts to structural metal. They weren’t dissimilar to breeching bars that the Marines used in ship to ship actions, though they were considerably larger than the miniaturized military units Rene was used too. The lights suddenly dimmed to almost nothing and Rene had the sudden and irrational fear that the fusion plant was about to go critical due to years of half competent maintenance. That would have been extremely unlikely but ... after a moment though the lights began to come back up in uneven patches.

With no time to ponder power fluctuations. Rene lurched back across the deck, his foot caught in something solid concealed in the trash and he fell to the floor, breaking the fall with his arm as the slung mob gun banged painfully into his hip. 

“Stars Above!” he cursed and pushed himself to his feet, vaulting over the last of the detritus to reach the hatch. The hold was as he had left it save for the fact that the hose was no longer spewing water. Perhaps the ready tank had been drained, or perhaps the pump needed user input every so often to keep valves open. He crossed the deck at a sprint, placed the cutting bar against the jam of the hatch and squeezed the activator stud. Nothing happened. Rene looked down and saw that the battery pack was not only empty but so old the contacts had actually corroded it in place.

“Fuck!” he screamed in frustration and pounded impotently on the hatch with the useless cutting bar. Sparks flew where the diamond teeth scuffed the metal.

“What seems to be the problem Master Quentain?” an oddly familiar voice crackled from a dusty intercom speaker. Rene turned to stare at it in surprise. The voice was distorted by the half derelict equipment but that sultry undertone was unmistakable. 

“Mia?” he asked in shock. How had Solae managed to get the AI uploaded without being on the ship. The command center, the ship had to be connected to it in order to receive all of the data about the slave shipment, weather data, landing telemetry. In theory the ships own communication gear had lock outs that would prevent the remote installation of something like an AI but a tramp freighter in the back end of nowhere had probably never had them set up properly.

“Yes Master Quentain, I apologize for the condition of the house. I cannot find records for cleaning staff and I am experiencing some difficulty accessing the kitchen.” Rene blinked, momentarily defeated by too many strange impulses. The condition of the house?

“Mia can you open the door?” he asked, tossing the useless cutting bar away.

“Yes but there are two men on the other side who might prefer privacy…”

“Open the door Mia!” Rene implored. The containment door hissed halfway up and bound in its housing. Rene leaned back and kicked the door frame and the door slid the remaining three feet into its housing.

“Has Mistress Solae seen this side of you, you were fairly subdued at the previous manor and based on her reactions to stress she might find…” One of the crewmen leaned out from behind a hatchway and opened fire. The small pistol yipped as he filled the corridor with automatic fire. Instinctively Rene threw himself forward onto the deck unlimbering his mob gun as his body slapped the metallic plating. Wild ricochets caremed down the accessway, filling the air with amber traceries. The shots were too high, the muzzle lifted by the pistols recoil. Rene fired a split second before the figure ducked back into cover. The mob guns aerofoils sparkling uselessly up the hallway. There was a scream of terror as Rene scrambled to his feet and rushed the hatch, working the action to lever another round into the cumbersome weapon. 

Behind the hatch the crewman with the pistol, a bearded man, overweight and in slightly less filty coveralls, was fumbling with his pistol trying to reload after foolishly emptying the magazine. Behind him another man, skinny and cadaverous with gleaming oiled hair was typing furiously at a console. The first man dropped his pistol and threw himself at Rene catching the marine in a flying tackle and driving him into the bulkhead. Rene yelled and swung his weapon stock at the mans head but the impact with the bulkhead spoiled the stroke and the metallic stock bounced off the man’s flabby back without more than a grunt of pain. The fat back tried to twist Rene to the floor but the former aristocrat dropped the gun and drove his fist in a rabbit punch into the man kidney. This time the crewman howled in pain and recoiled, half grabbing at his kidney with his left hand. Rene drove his knee up into the man's chest as he straightened. A blast of rank breath blew across Rene’s face but he was already driving his booted food into the man's crotch. Vomit exploded from the battered crewmans lips and he staggered back. The thin man was drawing a small flechette pistol from his belt and fumbling with the safety. With a shout Rene drove his boot into the fat man's sternum tumbling him back into his companion. They both went down in a tumble and Rene scooped up the mob gun, pointed it in the general direction of the crewmen and pulled the trigger.

As the echoing blast faded there was a long moment of silence. Rene let the smoking gun lower so that he held the grip with one hand and sagged back against the bulkhead. The two crewmen were too intermingled to tell apart, flesh and clothing torn to red ruin by the blast. Individual muscles still trembled but that was muscle spasms, not anything resembling life. The flechette pistol had been too much of a risk to take. It was an amateur's weapon, designed to be pointed in the general direction of the target without the need to really aimed, but at close quarters it would have shredded Rene nearly as effectively as the mob gun had shredded the crewmen.

“Would you like me to dispatch cleaning crews?” Mia enquired politely, “Delays may be significant.”
Rene shook his head, though he had no idea if Mia could register the motion without the excellent sensors she had had at Lord Armon’s. He took a step into the small chamber the two had been holed up in. It appeared to be a navigation or communications rather than a pilot station. Rene made a half hearted effort to brush the mist of blood from the console screen but succeeded only in smearing the tacky blood. He went the rest of the way up the access way to the cockpit. It was much cleaner than the rest of the ship although still well short of a military inspection. Three consoles sat facing the forward view port. Through it he could see the manor house and the reinforcement panels rising. He frowned in concern

“Solae?” he said, tapping his ear bead, the damn thing seemed to be struggling to cut through the hull plating. Cursing he ran back down the accessway to where the ramp exited the ship. A containment door sealed the entryway but a quick word to Mia opened it and he ran down onto the landing pad. His heart was thumping, fear that something had happened to her far outweighing caution.

“Solae, we have control of the ship? Where are you? What is happening?”