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desperately attempting to overwhelm their position.
     There were six of them, two of them holding back to provide somewhat ineffective covering fire, the rest advancing into steady gunfire from Cooper and Cantrell, both trying to push the technicians back. With a thud, two of them slammed into the door, reaching for the two crewmen. Cooper took a shot at one, dropping the crewman but sending himself spiraling away into the room, while the other struggled with Cantrell.
     Orlova didn’t look up, not for a second, but continued to work, furiously typing commands into the console to scramble the system, anything to stop the ship from jumping. In the corner, the communicator was shouting at thin air; Manning drifted over to it and started to give a report to the Captain, but everything other than the console was fading away for Orlova.
     Her attention was finally grabbed by a loud shout from the far end of the corridor, and a wave of shots sending the remaining crewmen into cover, those who were still able to move at all. Durman had made it with the reinforcements at long last, and the battle of the corridor was over. With a series of winking red lights on the panel, Orlova realized that her personal battle with the console had also been won, and she gestured for Manning to throw her the communicator.
     “ Hendecaspace drive disabled, sir,” she reported. “We have secured the engineering section.”
  “ Casualties?” Marshall asked.
     “ On our side, looks like a few wounds, nothing serious. The Ouroboros crewman didn’t fare so well.”
      “ I see. Proceed and secure the ship, Lieutenant, and bring it in to Hydra Station. We’ll see you there.”
     “ Aye, Captain. I’m on my way to the bridge.” She closed the channel, looked around at the devastation, and shook her head, before pushing back out towards the elevator.

    Chapter 4
     
     “ Where are we going?” Cantrell asked Cooper as he floated down the corridor.
     “ I’m trying to find Astrogation,” he replied, gesturing at a door. “Manning, Frazer, check out that room.”
     “ Astrogation?”
     “ Best we find out where this ship was going. If there’s a concentration of ships we don’t know about, we should get that information as soon as possible. It isn’t likely to be heavily guarded.”
     “ Oh.”
     “ Disappointed?” he replied with a smile, as he continued to push down the corridor. He’d sold Orlova on the idea that Astrogation was a key area to take, but both of them had known why he really wanted to get there as fast as he could, before anyone could decide to start deleting anything. Before he died, the Cabal traitor, Diego, had given him a clue to the location of the Espatiers that were being held captive.
     Days of work with Alamo’s database and the Cabal files they had acquired had drawn a blank; he needed a new source of information, and Ouroboros was his last hope to make any sort of sense out of the clue – a single word, Al-Sarfar. It had occurred to him that the traitor might have just said anything in a bid to get out of trouble, to try and pacify him, but he tried to push that thought to the back of his mind.
     “ Nothing in the room, Corporal,” Manning said. “Just stores. Want an inventory?”
     “ Later, Spaceman,” he replied. “Let’s get going.”
     His group turned a corner, and came across a single figure nervously standing in front of a door. Before he could even raise his weapon, Cooper fired a shot over his shoulder, sending him ducking behind a hastily positioned packing crate.
     “ Give it up!” he yelled. “We have control of most of the ship; surrender and you will not be harmed.”
     The figure peered over the top of the box at the group of people, then tossed his pistol away into the corridor. Manning pushed forward with Cantrell, quickly searching him.
     “ What do you want us to do with him?”
     “ Let him go.”
     “ What?” Cantrell said,