As the ghoul clawed closer and closer, Galatea became desperate. She pushed aside the distraction of her imminent peril and the crushed ghoul’s wordless screaming, and looked around the room. There were other work surfaces within conceivable jumping distance of her current perch.
In particular, there was a row of cabinets running perpendicular to her table that were relatively clear of clutter, and sized so that their top could serve as a counter for someone of the absent alchemist’s height. It seemed the perfect place to retreat from the still-mobile ghoul, with its useless legs.
It would take an impressive leap, but then, Galatea was an impressive woman. Her well-formed legs had cost a pretty penny in genome enhancements which went beyond her parents’ baseline; the Adamses were quite successful businesspersons and they had been determined to give their children the advantages they’d never had.
Galatea made her way to the end of the table as quickly as she could without tripping over the various apparatus bolted to it. She hesitated for a moment, poised on the brink. She rocked her arms back and then forward, leaping with all the strength she could muster for the high counter.
Her knees met the front of cabinet and her torso collided with the top edge, her sizable chest being the only part of her to contact the horizontal surface, and that only briefly and painfully in the instant before she rebounded back and landed on the floor.
“Oh, I hope my father sues the jumpsuit off the gengineering outfit!” Galatea said. “Those charlatans and thieves and ah… oh, void!” In too much pain to rise, she twisted around to see the injured ghoul dropping off the side of the table and resuming its crawl towards her. Worse, zombies were clambering over the bed and in through the door. “I can’t die yet!” she shrieked, scrambling backwards. “For space’s sake, I’m only a child!”
She backed up against the cabinet, whimpering and covering her eyes like a child of a much younger age.
There was an ear-splitting bang, and Galatea’s eyes flew open. Zombie bits and white shreds of bedding were flying through the door. The ghoul’s head had whipped around towards the door… allowing it to catch the blade of Regan’s war axe in the face.
“Hey, The Slut!” Regan announced, vaulting into the room. “Did you miss me?”
“Like my anal virginity,” Galatea said. “Where the void were you, you disagreeable rodent? I was very nearly non-sexually assaulted!”
“Oh, no, don’t go an’ mention me savin’ ya,” Regan said, retrieving her thrown axe. “It was nothin’, like, really.” She held out a hand to the downed woman, and helped pull her to her feet. Her nose crinkled. “Have a wee bit o’ an accident, did wee?”
“I don’t want to die soaked in my own urine!” Galatea moaned. “Regan, urinate on me before something kills us.”
“Oh, relax,” Regan said. She whipped the pillowcase with the gold bar in off her belt and held it to show the unmistakable glint. “We aren’t sunk yet, ya know.”
“Where in space did you get that?” Galatea asked.
“Spun it from straw,” Regan said. “Little trick I learned from me ma. Did I ever tell ya how she came to be the queen? Her da was always boastin’, and one day, he claimed his daughter could…”
“Oh, you horrid little liar,” Galatea said. “That’s probably not even real gold.”
“’tis,” Regan said. “I spun it meself.”
“I’m not suggesting that I believe you, but if there’s even a tiny chance that is the genuine article, we should deliver it to the engine room with all due haste and effect our escape,” Galatea said.
“Wouldn’t do,” Regan said. “That monster o’ a ship outside’s close enough to open fire if we start powerin’ up. We need to give it somethin’ better to think about, and quick-like. Start lookin’ around.”
“Whatever for?” Galatea asked, yanking the cover off something that looked like an enormous optical microscope. “I certainly don’t know anything about alchemy,” she said as she went down the line, uncovering equipment that ranged in appearance from little brass perpetual motion machines to cutting-edge electronic imagers. “And you don’t know anything about anything. What exactly possessed us to think we could cobble together…”
“Take a look at this, The Slut,” Regan said. Galatea turned and saw that Regan had plugged the good fuel bar into a groove on the side of an oblong metal triangular prism. “Fits here. What do ya think?”
She set the rather heavy apparatus down on the table. Galatea tipped it back on its edge and inspected it.
“This line of light,” she said, frowning at a sickly yellowish-greenish glow which ran the length of the bar. “Did it come on when you put the bar in?”
“Think so,” Regan said.
Galatea dug in around the edge pulled on one end of the bar until it popped out. The light vanished.
“It appears to be something similar in nature to an energy cell tester,” Galatea said. “But regardless, it’s clearly drawing power from the bar… however infinitesimal an amount.”
“Right,” Regan said. “So we put the dummy bar with the booby trap in it, an’…”
“And twenty-three years later, it may just be sufficiently drained for the core to destabilize and explode,” Galatea said.
“Well, it’s a start, isn’t it?” Regan said. “Let’s get this thing turned over an’ take a look at the insides.”
“It will be a miracle if we can manage to do anything besides break it,” Galatea said.
“That’s the idea,” Regan said. “We just want to make sure it breaks in our favor.”
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