Silver explores Biology

Captain Silvia had been here before. Well, nearly, she reminded herself that she had explored at least a dozen abandoned science vessels before and half of which had had something sinister happen to them. In all but one of the instances of foul play the trouble had started in the Biology Block. Silver noted that she certainly had not been in a ship of this design before, it was an odd one.

"What cha' thinking?" Silver mulled to herself as she carefully eased her way down the dark passageway which led off from the dock. There had been virus on the loose before, and although the scanners hadn't picked anything up and although Jennifer never made any mistakes (typical for a Martian) she was going to keep her own detector on and set to sensitive. Once there had been a gas leak. Once the science crews had tinkered with their own DNA and turned themselves into short lived monsters. Once the science crews had found something on a planet which had escaped, killed them and then died itself. Science and Engineering vessels, Silver pondered, could be more dangerous than fighters and battleships. Silver preferred the honest simplicity of a dogfight over all the weird effects of high science.

As the lights flickered and blinked out, Silvia ducked down and raised her gun. Within in a second she was in a defensive pose in the shelter of a doorway. "Jenny!" she hissed in to her coms-unit, "What's up with tha lights?"

"There's been a power surge," Jennifer's crisp English sounded in her ear, "I can reboot and recycle in 53 seconds, Captain."

53 seconds? Silver grinned in the darkness, "Lights on in a minute, heh?" she teased down the microphone.

"46 seconds, Captain" came Jennifer's predictable reply.

Just then, in the darkness and up ahead, a patch of darkness moved.