Chimera 🌈 [ONC 2024]

4: Minotaur

Fuelled with adrenaline, Leanne raced to Airlock-C, hoping to override the cycle before Phaethon could get past the inner door. She hurried down the access corridor, slipping in her socks on the polished tiles. Her stomach swooped as she saw the green light above the hatch. The inner door had already been opened. Desperately, she pressed herself to the portal window, staring through into the empty chamber and out through the exterior porthole where the universe turned carelessly.

Phaethon was inside.

Barely daring to breathe, she backed against the nearest bulkhead. She had grabbed a wrench from her tool-box and now cradled it like a weapon. The silence was deafening, broken only by her thundering heart. She strained to hear the click of metallic legs, the turning of that antennae corona on Phaethon's body. Nothing. Perhaps it could fly and was yet in the air, silent, searching. Phaethon did not come from the BASE; it was a Martian design, supposed to be under the control of Imperium.

"Valkyrie," Leanne whispered into the darkness. "Where is it?"

"I don't know what you are referring to, Miss Ziegler."

Leanne's fear throbbed into anger. "Phaethon," she spat. "The probe. Where is it?"

"I have no readings on it."

Leanne did not believe that. Valkyrie had been able to see her ID just by her holding it randomly aloft. It had eyes everywhere. Phaethon was not hard to miss.

She could not simply wait by the airlock to be detected. Phaethon would kill her, she knew it; the probe had dispatched Cliff with a brutal efficiency, snuffing all his years in one blow. Leanne's stomach squeezed, her throat closed with tears. No. She would not submit. She had to revive the comms and send messages to Nerio and Wells station. Imperium could de-activate Phaethon, if contact could still be maintained.

She knew she could not trust Valkyrie to open up a comms channel. So, grasping the wrench in a damp fist, she took a single step back towards the control centre. Nothing responded to her gentle pad upon the tiles. Glancing down the long access corridor, she tried to see a flash of red, of silver, in the shadows. The Chimera kept her secrets closely guarded. No sound echoed through her underbelly.

The way back to the control centre seemed to be choked with miles of passageways. Leanne kept close to the walls, sliding past hatches and vent access panels. A labyrinth of grim, chthonic corridors twisted and turned about her, illuminated only by flickering bar lights that pulsed green and eerie. They scythed over her path and turned the ship into a patchwork of undefined silhouettes. At every junction point, she leant around the corner, peering this way and that. She wondered if she should seal compartments off, but with no idea where Phaethon was, she could be trapping herself in with it.

Finally, the heart of the control centre arose in the midst of the maze. Leanne swallowed, brushing droplets of sweat from her forehead. A comforting blue glow emitted from the chamber; the panels were still online. Phaethon had not corrupted them.