Hao had a chem-scanner out as we ran into the hold. Smart. No telling what the state of the atmosphere in an old hulk like this would be. But Hao must have been satisfied with the results because she beckoned the Kylians in with large motions of her arm. The crew by the airlock waved back, sending a stream of people inside.

  The Belithain was cold, dark, and so sweet I could have kissed it, if I hadn't risked dripping sludge into my mouth when I removed my twisted shirt from my face. The Kylians seemed just as happy.

  Then Hao ruined it all.

  "Where are the engines?" she said.

  "Void that," I said. "We need to find the controls, and the fusion core. Doesn't matter if some of the engines won't start."

  "What if none of them start?" Hao said, pointing.

  There was a big bulge in the Belithain's cargo hold where she pointed, a rounded bullet ten or twelve meters in height. Looked like someone had fired a giant round into the ship, and then welded it shut. The hold itself was flat, with a loading ramp going down, and another going up, huge shadows in the distance that implied multiple levels. There would be room to spare for the Kylians.

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  "Why wouldn't they start?" I said, but Hao was already running back to the entrance.

  No, not the entrance. The bulge.

  I followed her, the sound of my boots lost in the clatter of the Kylians' entering. Their breaths were fogging up the air, but at least some of them had flashlights, their waving beams adding a surreal feel to the giant cargo hold.

  Hao neared the bulge, where a bundle of cables thick as my torso lay discarded. The ends had been roughly severed, the copper and super-conductive wires jagged, the polymer coatings frayed.

  "What's that?" I said.

  "Power couplings," she answered, sticking her head into an opening in the bulge.

  "That size?" I said. A plasma gun battery might require power like that, not a trudging long-hauler.

  "Quad stone engines," Hao said. "They're gone."

  "What?" I said. Four warpstones in a single engine was suicidal. We had trouble with two stone setups on the Bucket.

  "Gone, ripped out of their housings," Hao said.

  Something clicked in my mind. The Belithain didn't have balanced engines. Instead of calibrating an engine, they wrapped it in electro-mag coils and throw loads of power at it. That's why the cables were so thick. But the engines were gone. We would be frozen in space, stuck to the station.

  Except.

  "We've got to check the other pods," I said.

  "No," Hao said. "You don't rip out one set of engines and leave others around. This hull's been gutted."

  The Belithain was a death trap.