Several hundred meters ahead of Binary Bloom’s outer hull, the eight Qyrl landing craft vanished from visuals and scanners. The station didn’t have 4D scanners, because it had no reason to have them, but Nicodemus didn’t need them to understand what had happened.


    ?They’re phasing through the hull.“, he said into the microphone that connected him with the marines in the landing dock, ?Warehouse section, mostly.“


    ?Do we have a clear path there?“, a voice from the speakers answered him, intonation clearly making it out as a military man.


    ?No.“, Nicodemus stated, ?We have a few small hull breaches along the way, and two large ones in the sections immediately before it. They are depressurizing as we speak. The smaller ones can be sealed by the people in that section, but the larger ones I’m not sure, and there’s not many people at that end of the station.“


    ?Roger that. We can’t fly out and attack from there. These freighters are not equipped for boarding operations. We have space suits. Are there airlocks to pass through the breached sections?“


    ?Let me check.“, Nicodemus turned to Ricky and asked him if he knew. The young engineer thought for a second, then nodded and went over to the display, tracing a path through the sections of Binary Bloom that were now sealed off from one another.


    Nico turned back to the microphone: ?Should be possible. You’ll get a map with the path on the data channel in a minute.“


    Three sections away, inhabitants of Binary Bloom were running from a hole into space that had made a sudden appearance. The plasma ball had buried itself into an inside wall and was slowly losing heat, glowing less and less. Two people were being brought away by others, their arms slung over the shoulders of those dragging them. Air was rushing through the hole, carrying a few light items with it. Two people were quickly approaching it with a sheet of metal held between them. It wouldn’t be a perfect seal, but the hole was the size of a volleyball and it would be less than two minutes until enough air would be lost for people inside to lose consciousness. Of course, the two now temporarily sealing the hole hadn’t run the calculations, but they knew that time was of the essence. With a loud clang they let go of the metal sheet a hand width from the hole and the air pressure force it it flush against the hull. The whooshing of the air rushing out was replaced by a whistling sound of much less air escaping through the gaps still left. The impact was more heat than kinetic, so the metal around the hole was only slightly bent inwards, but it was enough to make a good seal difficult. People were scrambling to find other materials to add. Someone had run away to get the quick-set foam that would do a better job. Air was still rushing out from the space between the two hull layers of the station, but that would end soon, there wasn’t much air in it anyways.


    Another three sections in, an industrial section had its hull still intact, but scorch marks along the walls showed that energy weapons had been fired very recently. Two corpses were lying face-down in the hallway, having been shot in the back while running away.


    An opening had been cut into the wall about halfway up. Behind it, the air duct was visible running along the wall at that precise location. It was narrow - for a human. It lead to a larger ventilation shaft and then to the smuggler’s cache that Micah had uncovered. In front of that was the body of Baer, more scorch marks and flechette dents indicating he had gone down fighting. The cache itself was empty.


    Three more sections towards the end of Binary Bloom was the warehouse section. A Qyrl landing craft was sitting in an empty warehouse just two doors down from Yezz’s storage. A dozen creatures, standing somewhat shorter than humans, with a slender build and an insectoid exoskeleton shimmering with metallic sheen were moving crate after crate from Yezz’s place into the landing craft. They were pushing electrical pallet jacks, their elongated heads bobbing up and down with their almost running gait. There was no expression in their multi-faceted eyes, just different colors dancing over their surface in ways that other Qyrl could interpret as moods, but humans barely noticed. Their long, whip-like antennae twitched constantly, picking up subtle vibrations and changes in air pressure.


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    Of which there was quite a bit further along the corridor. One dead Qyrl soldier was being carried into the landing craft by his comrades. The others were shooting back, having taken cover at a corner. From further along, the beam of a plasma rifle appeared occasionally, in an attempt to find another target.


    It was Elias firing at the Qyrl he had spotted as he was dragging Micah back towards the core of the space station. He got one of them by surprise. He wasn’t sure about one more, maybe that was a hit as well, maybe not. Valarie was ducked behind the corner to his right, Micah was still unconscious, lying at her feet. Elias had taken cover behind a large box of spare parts, solid enough to take a good number of shots.


    He checked the charge of the rifle. Half his shots had been fired. Shooting a plasma rifle inside a space station was risky, but unlike the more common flechette guns it would penetrate body armor.


    Elias had never seen Qyrl with his own eyes, but plenty of pictures. There was not mistaking them. He was constantly checking all around himself and had given Valarie orders to cover his back, in case any of them went into the 4th dimension, walked around him and appeared there. He reminded himself that ?into“ was a typical human thought. For the Qyrl, the 4th dimension was just another direction, not something to step into. It was only to human eyes that it looked like it.


    Elias didn’t realize that his intuition was more correct than he gave it credit. While operating within the 3D space of Binary Bloom, the Qyrl had to stay in the 4th-dimension cross-section that intersected with the 3D reality that Binary Bloom resided in. The same way that humans had to stay in, say, the aisle of a supermarket if they wanted to see along it or grab items from it. Being able to move to a different aisle was always possible, but made the other one inaccessible.


    The Qyrl were, however, shooting at him from dimensional diagonals. Near him the firing line had to be almost in the same 3D space, so his cover was protecting him. But it allowed them to shoot ?over“ the walls right in front of them, so they could fire at him without leaving their cover. It was frustrating.


    He had seen the alien ships on his scanner before leaving his quarters, but details of the events outside the station were unknown to him. He had no idea how many Qyrl had landed on Bloom and where. He only knew that he was very close to this end of the station, so the chances were good that all Qyrl were in front of him and none behind.


    He fired two more shots at the corner he knew at least two Qyrls standing behind. The angle of his hits was obtuse and the hits glanced the wall, most of their energy bouncing off. There was a hole in the wall now, but it didn’t penetrate all the way to the other side.


    Suddenly, Valarie cried out and a quick series of shots from his right alarmed him. Elias threw himself to the right and down, not knowing if it would get him out of the shot he knew was coming for him. It did not. Pain shot through his lower body as he felt needles penetrating his skin, burying themselves deep into his inner organs. A second shot almost missed him, a few more needles crashing into his upper body this time.


    Behind him, a Qyrl soldier fell to the ground, likewise hit by Valarie’s gun. Out of the corner of his eyes Elias registered needles sticking out of the body armor around the chest area, like the spines of a hedgehog. Further up, what remained of the alien’s face made it clear that she had aimed her second shot higher.


    Elias fought down the pain and forced himself back into a crouched position. He could barely feel his body, and the smell of blood and other fluids running out of him filled his nose. He aimed the plasma rifle once more and shot, just in the general direction of the Qyrl, just to tell them that he was still there and they’d better not come out of their cover.


    Valarie came to his side, crawling. Without a word she pulled out a bandage and a tiny bottle of disinfectant from a pouch on her belt. It was all she had on herself as far as medical equipment went. She sprayed some of the fluid on Elias, and he gasped in pain, sinking down again. Just in time, as more shots from the Qyrl whizzed above the cover.


    ?Elias!“, he heard Valarie’s voice from seemingly far away. He barely noticed her attempt to wrap the bandage around his torso. ?Blood loss“, he thought. He fired off one more shot, hitting the ceiling a good distance away from his target. He barely noticed the Qyrl retreating, ducking quickly as he fired, but otherwise not looking back. It seemed an orderly retreat.


    He slumped down, the rifle dropping to the ground next to him with a rattle. He felt his consciousness fading away, thankful that it took most of the pain with it. There was a tiny urge to say something meaningful, a few good last words. He couldn’t think of any. His head slowly nodded downwards, to his chest. A foul smell of bile acid came into his nose and stirred him up slightly. The greenish-brown liquid from his gall bladder was dripping out of one of the holes the Qyrl had put into him. With a last effort of willpower he forced himself to stay awake, to do something, anything. His wandering mind found no action to take. Fading away like water on a sandy beach, even the sound of the girl - what was her name? - calling his name over and over faded away. Elias closed his eyes one last time.