Rebecca and Bar-moon planned on infiltrating the engine room in hopes of causing more chaos to buy them time before help arrived. It was a heavily guarded facility, but it was the only facility they could get to without running into more pirate patrols.


    So far they didn''t really have a long-term plan, and we''re just doing things on the fly while trying to avoid getting themselves cornered. Rebecca and Bar-moon returned to the panel that Bar-moon was working on early and used it to cut off the power to the lights in the engine room. They then destroyed the panel and doubled back toward the maintenance closet to hide while a patrol passed them by before they proceeded down the corridor to another panel.


    Bar-moon had detailed knowledge of many of the ships systems since he was one of the brightest engineers the pirates kept on their crew, so sabotaging the ships systems would be easy as long as they didn''t get caught.


    Bar-moon led Rebecca to another panel that was connected to the door controls in that section of the ship, so Rebecca was able to close all of the blast doors. This separated and trapped various different patrols which gave Bar-moon and Rebecca more room to work with. She implanted a back door she could use in the system so she could access it remotely while they were on the run, and continued to follow Bar-moon to sabotage more systems.


    Now that they had control over the blast doors, they circled back to the engine room, and initiated their plan. Rebecca waited in the maintenance closet while Bar-moon offered to draw them out.


    Bar-moon crept up to the engine room door and opened it without drawing too much attention. Thankfully, all of the lights were off in the engine room, and most of the pirates were in close proximity to one another.


    Pew, pew! Bar-moon shot one of the guards twice before storming off back toward the maintenance closet.


    Four guards pursued him, but Bar-moon hid in the maintenance closet with Rebecca before any of them could find him. However, the four guards came by it and two of them continued on while two others decided to check the closet itself.


    A few moments after the other two guards ran off, Rebecca sealed a set of blast doors behind them to cut them off, but she still had to find a way to deal with the two guards standing right outside the maintenance closet. She and Bar-moon didn''t have any other choice besides taking out the guards themselves, so Rebecca charged out of the door at one of the guards. Rebecca punched him, while Bar-moon just barely shot the other one in time before he could react.


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    With those two guards down, Rebecca grabbed one of the pistols from the two guards they had just taken out, and returned with Bar-moon to the entrance to the engine room to see how many guards remained. From what Bar-moon recalled, there were usually about eight guards on duty at any given time in the engine room with around a dozen enslaved engineers, including himself.


    When they approached the door to the engineering room, they saw that it was still wide open, and there were about five separate beams from flashlights moving about the room. One of them was pointed down toward the floor leading up to the door, and there was a single guard walking along the catwalk that led to the entrance.


    The room was pretty large being anywhere from five times the size of the cargo bay of the Appalachia with a couple of massive engines standing about ten feet apart from one another with the two of them taking up half of the room. The entrance led to a series of catwalks that were suspended about twenty feet over the floor of the engineering room, and there were two stairs on the far end of each side of the catwalk that each descended in a u shape.


    Rebecca and Bar-moon spotted a couple guards walking up the stairs, and the one who was patrolling the catwalks turned to face them. Seeing a good opportunity to strike, Rebecca attempted to shoot all three of them, but he only hit the guard who was initially patrolling the catwalk.


    As for Bar-moon he was able to take out one of the others, but the last one took cover on the stairwell placing the two groups in a standoff.


    Rebecca was about to rush in when Bar moon stopped her. "Stay back. If you charge out there, he''ll have no problem gunning you down before you even get to him."


    Another guard ran up the opposite set of stairs, and Bar-moon almost shot him. The pirate retreated back down the stairwell. That same guard came back up the stairs, but this time he had one of the engineers in a headlock in front of him.


    "Is he using that guy as a shield?" Rebecca asked surprised by the cruelty these pirates were showing.


    "Yes, that''s Ti-bar." Bar-moon stated with a sad look in his eyes. "Poor kid."


    The Ophthalian the pirate was holding looked pretty young. In fact, he was probably around Rebecca''s age. His head looked like that of a salmon except his scales were green and had blue eyes, and he had a collar around his neck.


    Bar-moon wasn’t able to get a good angle on the pirate holding Ti-bar, but the other pirate hiding on the opposite stairwell started getting bold. The pirate came up the stairs to the catwalk, but Rebecca had a good angle and shot them a couple of times.


    The pirate holding Ti-bar continued approaching until they got about five feet from the door. The pirate continued shooting through the door in Rebecca and Bar-moon’s direction leaving them without any chance of popping their heads out to return fire.


    Suddenly the pirate stopped firing, and Rebecca and Bar-moon both heard a body hitting the catwalk.