Scission: Distractions
The deepening thrum and vibration under Beka's hands and knees brought her out of her meditation on the Nietzschean's firm leather clad ass that she had been following and made herself take note their surroundings. She had been contemplating Tyr's change in behaviour over the last few months. It hadn't concerned her before. She was the only viable female on the ship, the only one he had regular contact with, so she had always attributed any attention to instinctual or ingrained cultural reactions to a breeding-aged female. Only in the rare teasing did she see a concerted effort to unsettle her sexually. His attention to her now was probably just an extension of that. She dismissed any idea that Uberperfect had changed his mind on human females.
She pried her eyes from the tight leather before her and scanned the tube. It was dark but she could make out the various coloured cables and pipes lining the grey walls. She had learned while fixing the sensors that the bright green colour indicated power and the red was the main sensor bundle. There was another unfamiliar large main line that was wrapped in a loose metallic fabric that felt similar to the EVA suits of the aliens.
"Where are we going?" she asked after what felt like an hour of crawling and climbing up and down ladders.
"I'm taking a circuitous route to what I believe are escape pods on the starboard side. They seemed from the schematic to be the most defensible."
"Oh." Beka's reply was cut short as her eyes caught what looked like a junction box down a branch to the right.
"Here." Beka turned into the utility tunnel not waiting to see if Tyr followed. They were, she guessed, above the main engines and power grid. She had followed a branch of what she thought were power lines into the tunnel. She stopped at the junction box.
"What are you doing?" Tyr said from near her ear.
She started. "Don't do that!" She was still twitchy from the fight in the hanger bay.
"But you jump even when you know I'm here. It is an interesting prey response." He reached around her to open the box's door wider.
It didn't deserve a reply. He always picked the weirdest times for humour. Like now he was so close behind her that she was overly aware of where his chest touched her shoulder, the way his inner thigh pressed against her hip, and the warmth of his presence. It was too much. She raised her hands. "Tyr, back off. I can't think."
He backed off only centimetres so he was no longer touching her. "You haven't answered my question."
"When I know I'll tell you." Beka studied the layout of the box. "Either try and overload the backup systems. Or see if we can fry the sensors in this section giving us a chance to get to the escape pods undetected." The configuration made no sense, but she pulled out her nanowelder and guessed. At this point any overload or power surge we could generate would have to be distraction enough. She hacked the couplings, tripling the energy input, the poor connections leaked EM in the visible range making the panel glow. She cut a fifth conductor, scanning at the wiring and piping around her. She chose a pipe, which she thought, could be a monitoring valve.
"Tyr! Go! Run." Beka chopped off the valve and stuffed the energy cable into the dripping fluid. As the Whoop! Whoop! of the siren sounded, Beka was already on Tyr's heels out of the tunnel.
"What did you do?" Tyr was wincing, his sensitive hearing assaulted by the siren.
"I have no idea. But it's distracting." The emergency lighting dimmed, it slowed to a long pulse that flared occasionally. They ran toward the starboard bulkhead.
