As the shuttle was docked quite close to the engineering section, Astrid left the heavy tools there while they proceeded to the bridge. Once there, Astrid planted herself in the pilot’s chair, fingers running along the keyboard like a pianist as she tried to get the diagnostics software to cooperate. Moments later, the central viewing screen displayed a readout of the ship’s systems. Filtering out what they didn’t need for the task at hand, she breathed a sigh of relief when the navigational computer showed ‘offline’ but not ‘damaged’. Power and heat management systems were also intact, meaning the ship wouldn’t start melting after a minute of use. “Once you get the comms up, Cake should be able to handle any software-related trouble. If you run into hardware issues, give me a call. I should be able to talk you through anything that’s at least remotely repairable via your helmet cameras. But according to this, the navicomp was disconnected from the rest of the ship. I’ll have to go to engineering, shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.”

The engineering section was a hall taking up three decks - The lowest deck contained a workshop and a general purpose assembler, the one above that was filled up by the main drive, service catwalks and support beams granting the room some structural rigidity, and the topmost part was where all the control stations were. That’s where Astrid was headed. Arriving with a happy tune on her lips, she quickly found the breaker that separated the navigational computer from the rest of the power grid and switched it on.

[i]“ALERT! Navigational computer control: disabled! Please contact a licensed technician.”[/i] An automated voice echoed across the hall.

“Yeah yeah, I know, shut up.” As the navigational computer was the shipmaker’s proprietary software, it took a bit of poking to find the menu she needed to allow the computer to manipulate the ship’s attitude and velocity. “Hey, Sparkle,” She tried to contact Cake, “assuming the lads unfucked the comms already, you should have access to the Moray. I’m leaving the navicomp disabled for now, because I don’t know what its last instructions are and I don’t want it to start moving the ship and give us away. It’s in your figurative hands now, just tell it what to do now and then switch it on when the fight starts. Unless you have a better idea, what do I know, you’re the computer.”

As she waited for any potential response, she leaned against the railing, looking down on the engine - and the song froze in her throat. “Ah shit, bomb!” Astrid cautioned on a channel to the rest of Beta team and Cake, not wanting to risk contacting the Prize and risking Du-Vos would overhear through the negotiations that were probably being led from the CIC, “Now I DEFINITELY want to send Du-Vos to kingdom come with a Moray-shaped missile. I recognize the type of charge, it shouldn’t be too hard to diasble, but: Don’t think me to be a coward - or do and see if I care - but if he thought to rig the junker with a bomb, don’t you think they might be watching?”