Losing Troy, Part 4

The first thing Audrey noticed were the red words Critical flashing on the screen. The ship was badly damaged, and taking the core of the mainframe would most likely damage it more. Thankfully, the Allegiance would never get the information they needed from the core about the newest sector and the strange energy transmissions found there.

     Audrey looked around her slowly, knowing that patience and cautiousness was the best option here. Secondary control panel there...airlock controls over there...gravity controls to the left...hyper and warp drives on the right... She drew in a deep breath. The ship was huge, and it might take a while. And who knew how many guards were left? Or where Troy was now, since she'd left him...

     "It's here somewhere," she whispered to herself, squinting with concentration. Her eyes tracked slowly around the massive bridge before finding the main control panel. That was a start. She headed over that way, her shoes making slight noises against the metal floor. 

     She let her fingers brush lightly over the dials and buttons, but she already knew the mainframe wasn't right here. 

     It was slow, frustrating work as she tediously tried to find entrance to the system and track the date streams to the core, and then use a sort of GPS to track the data transmissions from the core and pinpoint the location of the core in the ship. Easier said than done.

     "Finally!" she whispered triumphantly to herself, closing her eyes burning eyes briefly. She wiped a little bit of sweat off of her forehead before turning to look behind her and at the floor. 

     Her eyes instantly found the round oval in the center of the floor, which was probably six feet in diameter. She knelt down, her fingers probing around the surface, searching for a way to get it off. 

     "Well, I can't lift it," she told herself. "There's no trigger. Must be on that stupid control panel. Aargh! I did not sign up for this." She paused. "Well, actually I did. Okay, moving on..."

     Once again, Audrey returned to the control panel, but it didn't take nearly as much time now that she knew what was what, and knew the general grouping of the controls.

     "Here we go," she smiled tiredly, her fingers skittering over the keypad with the last code Jolie had given her. For once, she was certain that the code would work.

     With a mechanical whirring noise, the metal oval slowly lowered into the ground, revealing a pitch black hole that seemed to draw Audrey into it. She blinked once before stepping slowly forward, eyes still locked on the black oblivion.

     Reaching the rim, Audrey pulled out her energy sword, letting its light illuminate some of the dark space beneath her.

     "Ahh!" she yelled, jumping backwards as red, luminous eyes glared back at her.

     She scrambled back even farther as she heard the distinct sound of scales scraping against metal, and claws on steel as huge talon like appendages latched themselves to the edge of the hole. 

     Horror clutched at Audrey's stomach as she realized that whatever was down there...was coming up. 

     For her.