Chapter 413

• John led the way and it didn't take long to find the first corpse. A Federation marine had been shot in a brief fire-fight in the adjacent corridor. They stepped carefully over the body and headed further into the ship.
• The corvette interior wasn't large, consisting of a dozen rooms or so and it only took them 10 minutes to finish the sweep of the ship. They found 15 more dead crewmen and evidence of looting in most rooms. It looked like the crew had been caught by surprise and most of them had been killed during a hostile boarding action.
• The only really interesting find was the ship's armoury. This room was sealed behind robust locked doors, which were scarred with the evidence of a number of attempts to blast them open. John hooked up the chrome device again and after a few moments of contented humming, the doors swung open smoothly. Alyssa looked on with a raised eyebrow as he uncoupled the device from the opened portal.