Paige
Christmas Eve arrives wrapped in controlled chaos and the scent of hope.
The Starbright grid blazes along the corridor walls. Every civilian-installed light, every repurposed data conduit, every unauthorized connection that should drive me crazy but instead makes me want to cry. They have built this together. Build light in the darkness.
“Thirty-seven sections reporting stable power.” Jian appears at my elbow, her tablet glowing. “Eighteen more need adjustments but we're ahead of schedule. Chief, we're actually going to make it.”
“Yeah.” My voice catches. “We are.”
Below us, Giorgi Perrin waves up at me, his smile visible even from this distance. Yuki Tanaka coordinates three different work crews while simultaneously stringing lights along the support beams. The ship hums with purposeful energy, ten thousand people refusing to let darkness win.
Walsh hasn’t been seen since yesterday. Since Zoric confronted him in the briefing room, since Tobias started following him. The absence feels ominous, a held breath waiting to exhale.
My comm unit beeps. “Chief Martin, bridge.”
I recognize Lieutenant Morris's voice. Recognize the tension underneath. “Martin here.”
“We've got a fluctuation in the ship's core. Small but growing. Captain wants you to take a look.”
The core. Where all our primary systems converge. Where someone with enough knowledge can do catastrophic damage.
“On my way.” I catch Jian's eye. “Keep coordinating here. I'll handle the core.”
She nods but her expression shows she catches the same thing I have. Christmas Eve. Walsh missing. A problem in the most critical location on the ship.
I find Zoric waiting at the core access corridor. He looks at me and I can see the calculation in his eyes. The same calculation I've just made.
“This is a trap,” I say.
“Yes.” He gestures toward the sealed core entrance. “But the fluctuation is real. I've verified the readings myself. If we ignore it, we lose the ship.”
“So we go in, knowing Walsh is waiting to spring whatever he's planned.” I cross my arms. “That's a terrible plan.”
“Not if we're ready for it. I want to catch him in the act. With a witness. Undeniable proof. Tobias will follow us down, stay just outside. When Walsh activates his trap, Tobias arrests him for attempted murder.”
I stare at him. “You want to use us as bait.”
“I want proof we can use in a tribunal. Video evidence of him locking us in, triggering cascade failures, trying to kill us.” He meets my eyes steadily. “But only if you're willing. The risk is real.”
I think about Walsh's sabotage. The asteroid field. The cut conduit. The radiation surge during my EVA. All the times he's almost killed us and has walked away. “Let's catch this bastard.”
Zoric pulls up a comm channel. “Security Chief Hale, we're proceeding to the core. Maintain close surveillance. Arrest anyone who attempts to seal the access doors or trigger system failures.”
“Understood, Captain. I'm in position.” Tobias's voice comes through clearly. “You're covered.”
We descend through three levels of access corridors, the temperature rising as we approach the core. The vibration increases too, the ship's heartbeat stronger here where all the power converges. Emergency lighting casts everything in red, making our shadows stretch and twist.
The core chamber opens before us. Three stories tall, conduits and relays arranged in precise geometric patterns, the fusion reactor at the center throwing heat that makes the air shimmer.
The problem shows itself immediately. The primary relay junction sparks intermittently, each flash accompanying a drop in power flow. Not catastrophic yet. But getting there.
“We need to reroute power around that junction.” I pull up schematics on my tablet. “Redirect through the secondary coupling, bypass the damaged section entirely.”
“That will require manual recalibration at three points.” Zoric has already identified them on his own display. “I'll take the upper access. You handle the primary and tertiary.”
We move through the chamber in the kind of synchronization that only comes from weeks of working together. I don't need to tell him which tools to use or how to adjust the couplings. He doesn't need to explain his reasoning. We just work, solving the problem with the efficiency of long practice.
Fifteen minutes. The relay stabilizes. Power flow normalizes. The sparking stops.
“That's it,” I say, securing the last connection. “The core's stable. We've bought ourselves maybe an hour before...”
The doors seal.
Both exits, simultaneously, the metal grinding shut with the finality of a tomb. Emergency lights flicker once, twice. Then the backup power kicks in and everything steadies except my pulse.
“Paige.” Zoric is already at the nearest control panel. “The locking mechanism has been overridden. Remote access.”
Static crackles through the chamber's comm system. Then Walsh's voice, distorted but recognizable. “You've stabilized the core. Clever. But the cascade program is still running. In approximately thirty minutes, every system I've mapped will fail. Life support. Engines. Everything.”
I pull up my engineering diagnostics. Watch errors multiply across my screen. He isn't lying. Walsh has planted some kind of virus, and it is propagating through our systems like digital poison.
“You could have been great, Chief Martin,” Walsh continues. “You have the talent. The dedication. But you choose him over your own species. Now everyone pays the price.”
The comm cuts out.
I meet Zoric's eyes across the chamber. Watch his markings cycle through colors, amber, red, back to silver, as he processes the threat. Thirty-four minutes to save ten thousand lives.
“The doors,” I say. “Can we override from here?”
“Not remotely. He's locked us out of the primary systems.” Zoric moves to the manual access panel. “But every door has emergency mechanical release. If we can access the panel behind this wall...”
“I can cut through.” I am already pulling tools from my belt. “Plasma torch. Give me three minutes.”
“You have two.” He pulls up the ship-wide systems on his tablet. “I'll work on stopping Walsh's program from here. If I can isolate the cascade, slow it down...”
“Do it.” I activate the torch, blue-white flame cutting through metal. “I'll get us out.”
We work in silence broken only by the hiss of cutting metal and the occasional curse from Zoric as Walsh's program evades his attempts to shut it down. The heat in the chamber climbs. My hands shake from adrenaline and the torch's vibration, but I keep the cut line steady.
“Twenty-eight minutes,” Zoric reports. “The program is sophisticated. Multiple redundancies. I'm slowing it but I can't stop it.”
“Keep trying.” The torch breaks through the outer wall. I switch to manual tools, prying back the panel to expose the mechanical release. “I'm almost there.”
“Paige.” His markings blaze gold despite everything. “If we get out of here...”
“When. Not if.” I find the release mechanism, start manipulating the connections. “We're getting out. We're stopping this. And then we're going to arrest Walsh and save Christmas.”
His laugh is brief but genuine. “Your optimism is statistically unlikely but emotionally compelling.”
“That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.” The mechanism clicks. The door shudders. “Got it!”
The door cracks open six inches. Then a foot. Enough.
We squeeze through into the corridor beyond. Tobias Hale stands there, weapon drawn, Walsh secured against the wall.
“Cutting it close,” I manage.
“He is at the control panel.” Tobias nods toward a nearby access point. “Watching his trap work. Makes the arrest easy.”
Walsh looks up at us, his face twisted with hate. “It doesn't matter. The program's running. You can't stop it in time.”
“Watch me.” I pull out my tablet.
“The program is sophisticated,” Zoric reports, linking his own tablet to mine. “It's propagating through the secondary systems. I'm slowing it but I can't stop it from here.”
“The core stabilization has bought us time,” I say, already accessing the system. “But if we don't kill this virus, Walsh still wins.”
We work together, his analytical framework combining with my intuitive understanding of the ship's architecture. Walsh's program is brilliant. Elegant. Designed to propagate too fast to stop. But he built it alone. We are working together.
“Ten seconds,” Zoric counts down. “Five. Three. Execute.”
I trigger the kill command.
Every screen on my tablet goes blank. Then, one by one, systems start reporting normal. Green across the board. The cascade has stopped.
The interrogation room is small and cold. Walsh sits with his hands secured, his expression shifting between defiance and defeat. Zoric and I take the seats across from him.
“The program's deactivated,” I say. “We have your access logs. Physical evidence of the severed conduit. It's over, Walsh.”
He is silent for a long moment. Then: “It should have worked.”
“Why?” Zoric asks quietly. “Why try to destroy your own ship?”
“Not my ship anymore. Not once you contaminate it.” Walsh looks at Zoric with open hatred. “Earth for humans. That's what we fight for. And you people come in with your 'superior' logic and suddenly we're supposed to bow to alien command?”
“So you decide to kill ten thousand people to prove a point?” I can't keep the disgust from my voice.
“I decide to prove that alien command leads to disaster. That humans need human leadership.”
“The ship doesn't fail,” Zoric says. “It succeeds. Because humans and Zephyrians work together.”
Walsh's laugh is bitter. “I fail. Others won't.”
Tobias pulls Walsh to his feet. “I'll take him to the brig. You two should report to medical. Standard procedure after exposure to the core's radiation.”
Right. The radiation. I've forgotten about that in the panic of nearly dying. “Copy that.”