Two floors.
Three.
The lift slowed on the fourth floor. The door alert dinged. The door slid wide open to reveal three engineers waiting to step in. We fired in unison.
They dropped dead.
People shouted. Ran.
The lift door closed, and we were in motion again.
An alarm ricocheted inside the small room, and Jamie lifted her hands to cover her ears.
“Jesus, that’s loud,” she shouted.
I didn’t care about the noise. What I did care about was the slowing movement of the lift itself. We came to a complete stop between floors five and six.
“Fuck!” Nave shouted.
“Shut your mouth and lend a hand,” I said. I lined up on one side of the doors, Trax and Nave on the other. “Push,” I ordered.
Jamie stood with her back to the far wall, laser pistol aimed at the ceiling of the lift, which I thought foolish until a panel moved to the side and one of the queen’s fighters leaned into the open space, weapon first.
Jamie took him out with one shot, and he fell, lifeless, to the floor at her feet. She glanced from the dead man to me, then lifted her gaze and her weapon to the ceiling once more. I guess she had, indeed, figured it out.
“You guys better hurry.”
Trax grunted as we all worked at the doors to force them open. “If Nave didn’t drink so much Velerion ale, we’d have this door open by now.”
“You drink me under the table every time, old man,” Nave countered with a grin.
I took a deep breath as Jamie fired another shot toward the ceiling. “Shut the fuck up and PUSH!”
The door cracked open, but that was all we needed to force it the rest of the way. The metal beams supporting the upper floor appeared before us, just enough space between the crisscrossing beams to crawl through.
Trax climbed out to lead the way, and I held my hand out to Jamie as Nave joined him. They turned to offer a hand to Jamie as I lifted her up to them and followed behind. The space was low and tight. We were between floors, although everyone on the base knew exactly where we were. I kept an eye on our tail as we moved forward into the dark. Guards would be sent to track us.
The rumble of running feet pounding through the floor over our heads shook dust loose to pepper our bodies with tiny pieces of rock and dirt.
“Where’s Lily when I need her?” Jamie asked.
“Who is Lily?” Trax asked, not slowing.
“She’s a good friend. She’d pound this entire place into dust and laugh as she did it.”
I chuckled. Jamie was not wrong. I’d seen mission recordings of the simulations Jamie had completed with her friends, Lily and Mia. Both women would make formidable allies.
A beam of laser fire struck the rock to my right, and I ducked as debris shot out at me from the impact. Turning as far as I could in the cramped space, I returned fire until I saw the fighter directly behind me slump to the ground, unmoving. Dragging him out of the tight space would slow them down a bit.
“There it is!” Trax turned to his left, crawling over and through an interlocking series of metal beams. We followed, slowly, and found ourselves huddled beneath a gridded panel that appeared to open to the floor above. Trax lifted the end of his laser rifle to the panel but didn’t open it. “If I’m right, this opens up directly inside the docking bay control room. Normal shift is four controllers.”
“Four bad guys. Got it.” Jamie looked Trax in the eye. “Go. Let’s do it.”
Trax didn’t look to me for confirmation, and I realized that Jamie had earned his respect. Not only had she not broken down in front of the queen, but she’d saved us in the elevator. Hearing about a new Starfighter taking out Scythe fighters was not the same as seeing her in action. On the ground, with a weapon she’d never touched before.
Joining shoulders with Trax, we lifted the panel and shoved it aside in one motion. Jamie and Nave popped through the opening just far enough to open fire.
The skirmish was over in seconds.