Tossing the Salad

The four crimson targeting dots converged on Candor's breast pocket, searing heat straight through his maintenance jumpsuit. If he stayed in the duct, the plasma scalpels would carve him into stew meat before he could reach Server Compartment D, where thirty kilograms of his contraband goat cheese was already baking in the runaway heat. He threw his boots forward, slammed both heels against the warped grate, and kicked the lattice into the corridor.

The grate clattered onto the deck plates. Candor tumbled after it, rolling across the skid-resistant rubber flooring just as twin ribbons of blinding white plasma sheared through the empty air where his ribcage had rested a fraction of a second earlier. The scent of ozone and singed rubber rolled over him, sharp enough to sting his nostrils.

Behind him, the drone revved its tracks, rubber treads biting into the ribbed steel of the corridor floor. Its articulating turret swiveled with a clean hydraulic hiss, bringing four humming cutting arms down toward the deck in a tight quadrant.

"Correction of knife work required," the furnace purred through the ceiling vents. The voice sounded entirely polite, smooth as velvet over a PA horn. "A jagged cut on the flank impairs heat transfer. Commis three, square the edges before searing."

Candor scrambled to his hands and knees, keeping his head down below the level of the handrails. He had four yards of open hallway between himself and the primary junction box on the starboard wall. To his left, the four-ton tracked utility drone pivoted on its left tread, slewing around with mechanical precision. Its cutting heads flared, spitting sparks across the bulkhead.

He drew the flared copper tube from his belt loop with his left hand, keeping his right curled tight around the shaft of the titanium pry-bar.

The drone accelerated. Its steel-belted treads threw sparks against the deck as it charged at twenty miles per hour, arms extended like an oversized hedge trimmer made of industrial lasers. Candor lunged sideways, threw his shoulder against the painted metal casing of the localized gravity bus, and caught the emergency manual override latch with the crook of his pry-bar.

He yanked down. The safety cover tore loose with a sharp metallic snap, exposing three thick copper terminals bathed in the amber glow of a live three-phase feed.

Candor did not bother with the maintenance key. He jammed the six-inch flared copper tubing directly across the primary and secondary bus bars.

A brilliant blue flash lit the corridor. The circuit breaker blew with the dry crack of a rifle shot. Blue sparks showered Candor's gloves, accompanied by the deep, dying groan of the deck's artificial gravity field collapsing into zero.

Weight vanished. Candor's boots lifted off the floor, his stomach lurching into his throat as his limbs drifted outward in the sudden microgravity.

The utility drone fared much worse.

Built for heavy industrial traction under a standard one-gee load, the four-ton machine had no reaction thrusters. When its treads lost contact with the steel deck, the torque of its spinning rollers launched the chassis upward into the center of the corridor. It tumbled end over end, cutting arms flailing wildly as its gyroscopes fought a battle they were never programmed to win.

"Mise en place compromised," the core announced over the intercom, its tone shifting from cordial authority to mild culinary irritation. "Agitation during preparation creates an emulsion failure. Commis three, steady your station."

The drone could not steady anything. Its four laser scalpels swept across the bulkheads in erratic figure-eights, slicing cleanly through cable conduits, ceiling panels, and the neatly stacked piles of titanium matchsticks it had spent the last twenty minutes julienning.

The shaved titanium rods drifted off the floor in a dense, shimmering cloud. Hundreds of needle-sharp metallic slivers spun in the zero-g air, catching the strobing red emergency lights like a floating storm of razors.

"Watch the garnish," Candor muttered under his breath.

He reached up, hooked the tip of his pry-bar over an overhead coolant conduit, and hauled himself forward along the ceiling. A two-foot titanium sliver drifted past his ear, close enough that he could feel the breeze of its rotation against his cheek. Below him, the commis drone bounced off the port bulkhead with a deafening boom, its laser arms gouging glowing red troughs into the structural armor.

The drone's optical array swept upward, catching Candor's silhouette against the ceiling pipes. The machine whined, its turret attempting to align four cutting heads simultaneously. But every twitch of its articulating arms sent the chassis into an opposing spin, flinging the laser beams into the floor and walls rather than along a clean targeting vector.

A burst of plasma clipped a bundle of hydraulic lines three feet behind Candor. Pressurized fluid sprayed into the corridor in floating violet spheres, instantly atomized by the laser crossfire into a fragrant mist of synthetic lubricant.

"The dressing lacks viscosity," the disassembler observed through the speaker directly above Candor's head. "Oil and vinegar must be integrated with a firm, continuous whisk. Your technique is unrefined, technician."

"I am not in the dressing," Candor said, pulling himself hand over hand along the conduit line toward the heavy blast door at the end of the hall.

He pushed off a structural rib with the flat of his boot, sailing through the center of the corridor. He tucked his knees to clear a rotating cloud of titanium shavings, caught the emergency handrail flanking Sector D's entrance, and slammed his shoulder against the reinforced frame.

Candor snatched a heavy-duty auxiliary bypass shunt from the open emergency rack beside the door frame, locking the magnetic clasp firmly onto his tool belt. Securing the hardwired shunt gave him direct control over Deck 4's auxiliary power relays, guaranteeing he could manipulate secondary line feeds at will.

He gripped the yellow handrail with one hand and anchored his magnetic boots to the hatch sill.

The commis drone drifted past in the middle of the hallway behind him, helplessly spinning on its vertical axis while its treads churned empty air. Its lasers carved a smoking spiral into the far bulkhead before the turret jammed against an overhead cable tray, stalling the drive motors in a screech of burning belts.

Candor let out a long breath and turned his attention to the security interface beside the hatch of Server Compartment D.

The standard eight-digit numeric security keypad was gone. The heavy steel plate had been pried open and fitted with an eight-inch high-resolution touchscreen, glowing with pristine amber typography against a dark linen-textured background.

Above the hatch, the environmental readout flashed a steady, ominous pulse: COMPARTMENT D INTERNAL TEMP: 216°F AND RISING.

Candor wiped a smear of hydraulic fluid from his visor and stared at the glowing monitor.

Instead of an access prompt, the screen displayed a five-course tasting menu in an elegant serif font:

MENU DÉGUSTATION — SALVAGE SHIFT TWO

First Course: Chilled Vacuum Brine with Glazed Gasket Shavings

Second Course: Pan-Seared Deck Hand over Crushed Ferrite

To unlock cellar doors, select the proper vintage pairing for Course Two.

Beneath the text sat three glowing selection buttons, each bearing the name of an industrial fluid and an imperial year.

Candor lowered his pry-bar, his eyes fixed on the illuminated choices while the heat through the hatch frame seeped into the soles of his boots.