Sonya had chosen an away team consisting of Duffy, Lense Soloman, P8 Blue, and Stevens. Domenica Corsi would head up the security contingent, accompanied by Drew, Hawkins, and Frnats.

Sonya had gathered them all in the briefing room and showed them the station’s layout. Another viewscreen showed the prison platform itself, since they were now within visual range.

“That’s a prison,” Corsi said, belaboring the obvious. As usual, Core-Breach’s blonde hair was pulled back into a bun so tight Sonya was afraid the security chief’s skin would tear if she cracked a smile. “And we don’t know what conditions are like inside. So my people go in first.”

“Our initial problem is getting in at all,” Sonya reminded her. “The Kursican authorities can’t—or won’t—tell us the modulation frequencies of the defensive shields, so we can’t beam in.” She had already outlined the impossibility of landing a shuttle, and the defensive weapons they would encounter if they took the da Vinci in too close. “There are more than a thousand beings on that space station, including a Federation diplomat, prison workers, and families of prisoners, and they’re most certainly getting the stuffing beaten out of them, so we will get onboard and we will restore system functionality.”

“I’ll have sickbay ready to receive whatever we can take,” Elizabeth Lense said, watching the station spin and flop in space. “Hopefully there’ll be some medical staff there as well, and if their infirmary is in any kind of shape at all, we might decide to bring staff over. Casualties are likely to be in the hundred-percent range.”

“One would have to be strapped in pretty tight in order to not be injured,” Sonya agreed. “And even then, we’re likely to see the most extreme cases of motion sickness in the history of the universe.”

“Is it too late to back out of this one?” Fabian Stevens asked, a half-smile on his face. “Because seeing that much vomit is bound to upset my stomach.”

“Much too late, Fabian,” Sonya replied. “Just bring a scented hankie. And an entrenching tool.”

Stevens made a face, but kept his mouth shut, which was the result Sonya had been aiming for.

“What about getting onto the station?” Vance Hawkins asked. “Given all the difficulties you’ve outlined for us.”

Sonya turned to Kieran, sitting beside her in spite of Captain Gold’s recommendation. “Mr. Duffy and I have been working on that, and we’ve come up with a plan.”

Kieran had been waiting for his cue. “Here’s what we’ll do….”

Fabian Stevens had only been half-joking in the meeting. Now, floating through space in an environmental suit, watching the surface of the prison platform slip past the windows of his helmet, he felt his stomach lurch. Conventional wisdom said to focus on a fixed point when in zero-g conditions to avoid space sickness, but the way the platform spun, there were no fixed points to be had.

He had to admit that the plan Duffy and Gomez had thought of was a good one—simple, like the best ideas were, and, so far at least, effective. The away team had been transported, in environmental suits, into space near the runaway station. The theory was that individuals would be too small to set off the automated defense mechanisms, and could make their way to access hatches and get inside. The transporter had dispersed them across a fairly wide range so that the automated systems didn’t read the lot of them as one object, which meant some would have to travel farther than others across the platform’s surface. But with the magnetic boots of their environmental suits, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

He was currently less than three meters from the platform, and closing. It was the closing part that was a little intimidating—the platform hurtled past his face at an incredible speed. Making contact was going to be somewhat like jumping out of a moving vehicle at top speed, earthside. Which, he thought, isn’t something I’d ordinarily do by choice.

As he rushed toward impact, he heard Corsi’s voice, via communicator. She didn’t sound happy. “Ooof! Watch out for the—”

Then he was there, reaching out with his gloved hands for a protrusion that looked like a good handhold. It rose past his helmet, but he managed to get a grip on it with one hand. With his other, he touched the button on the control panel on his left thigh to activate the magnetic boots. His body rammed into the station, the shock absorbed only partly by his suit and mostly by his own skeleton, which would, he was sure, ache in the morning. But his magnetized feet came into solid contact with the platform’s skin, and he let go of the protrusion, the purpose of which was still uncertain. Standing, he felt somewhat better. He knew that he was still spinning and flipping around in space, but he was moving with his main visual reference instead of in opposition to it.

“—the landing,” Corsi continued.

A little late, Fabian thought.

But no later than he remembered what that protrusion he’d been clinging to had to be. A panel slid back, and he realized he was looking into a phaser weapon. He stepped backward as quickly as he could—the magnetic boots made diving out of the way an impossibility—as the phaser blasted into empty space.

“Watch for those squarish lumps!” he said into his communicator. “They’re phasers.”

“You mean the ones we talked about in the briefing?” Corsi came back.

“Yeah. They don’t look quite like I expected them to.”

“Just assume that every square inch of this thing is a weapon,” Sonya’s voice suggested. “I don’t even know that the Kursicans are aware precisely how well-armed this thing is.”

Fabian looked at the surface beneath his feet. Sonya’s advice made sense, but at the same time, the platform was old, its outer skin pitted and charred. He doubted whether it could be as sophisticated as the commander speculated.

But on the other hand, it was old enough that there could be booby traps that none of the da Vinci crew had ever encountered before. It wouldn’t hurt to step lightly—magnetic boots willing.

Looking across at the other members of the away team, he saw that they were following the same advice. A couple of others had inadvertently set off the hidden phasers. Probably a simple sensor set into the hatch that detected the presence of an intruder, he knew. Crude, but no doubt effective.

He started working his way, with the others, toward the bottom of the main core, where they had decided to go in. Corsi had worked her way to the front of the group already. He expected no less from the chief of security and his one-time—and he did mean one time—lover. She would always put herself in harm’s way to protect the rest of the crew. He was near the back of the pack, as it turned out. Everyone looked pretty much alike in their space suits, especially with their backs turned—with the exception of Pattie Blue, who didn’t require a suit—but he thought he was following Dr. Lense and Kieran Duffy.

He found out he was right when Kieran turned around to look his way. He pointed to a panel on the platform’s surface—it looked almost like the rest of the thing’s skin, but not quite as old and worn, less than a meter square. “Look out for that,” Kieran warned him over the comlink.

“Right,” Fabian said, remembering this one from the briefing. It was a magnetic field that would reverse the polarity of his boots if he stepped on it, propelling him out into space. Since these environmental suits had internal thrusters, he’d be able to reverse course and return, but it still wouldn’t be a pleasant sensation. This station was so old, though, that it had probably been built in the days before thrusters became common on environmental suits.

“Microtorpedo launcher,” Corsi’s voice reported. Fabian looked up to where she was—really, he supposed, down to where she was, since they were working their way toward what was supposed to be the bottom of the thing. But since it whipped around, out of control, there was no real telling what was up and what wasn’t. He saw where she was pointing, though—an array of narrow tubes through which the torpedoes would fly if they were triggered.

In this fashion, each one pointing out hazards to the others, they worked their way to the bottom of the core, where the shuttlebay was. Commander Gomez had decided that was their likeliest entry point from the outside. It took twenty minutes for them all to reach the wide-open space. And when they got there, Fabian had a sense that the hard part was just about to begin.