01-19-2026, 04:25 PM
== Impulse Deck ==
The go-ahead didn’t feel like relief.
It felt like a weight settling onto Riley’s shoulders—heavy, familiar, and earned.
Riley watched d’Tor’an peel off toward the torpedo bay, the Chief’s attention shifting to the wider hunt. That left Riley with the narrower problem in front of her: a scorched maintenance hatch and whatever waited beyond it.
She didn’t waste time staring after her.
Instead, she centered herself in front of the panel, kept her breathing slow, and forced her thoughts into clean lines. There was a difference between volunteering and posturing, and Riley wasn’t here to be a hero. She was here because the captain had put Tomer in her care at the start of this, and now Tomer was a suspected saboteur moving somewhere inside the ship’s bones.
You don’t get to be precious about the discomfort now.
Riley lowered into a controlled crouch and assessed the hatch without smearing her hands across it. The lock still wasn’t engaged. The seam still held that ugly, heat-fused sheen. The gouges still looked wrong—like something had hauled the panel shut when the mechanism didn’t want to cooperate.
She found a point to brace without dragging her fingers across the lip, then tested the hatch with measured pressure—more question than force. It resisted at first, then gave with a reluctant groan that raised the hair on her arms. Riley eased it up and held it there, creating a careful gap rather than yanking it wide.
She paused to listen. No obvious movement. No scrape of boots. Just the ship’s constant hum… and the faint change in airflow as the sealed space finally stopped being sealed.
Her throat tightened anyway, and not just from tension. The moment the opening existed, the Jeffries tube became real—close walls, recycled air, low clearance. A space that demanded you crawl and breathe and trust that you could back out if you needed to.
A memory tried to surface—an airlock, a too-small space, the feeling of time stretching thin.
Riley swallowed and let it pass through without letting it root. She wasn’t giving that part of her brain the steering wheel today.
Not now. Not when the ship’s at risk.
Riley shifted forward and slid into the accessway carefully, one shoulder at a time, keeping her movements deliberate so she didn’t bang her boots or rattle the paneling. The Jeffries tube closed around her fast—tight walls, hard angles, and just enough room to move if you kept yourself small.
Her heartbeat jumped, then steadied. She let the sound of her own breathing become background, something she could control, something she could use to keep her from rushing.
She didn’t push deep immediately. Instead, Riley moved with her eyes as much as her body, scanning as she went—dust patterns along the plating, scuffs on the ladder rungs, the telltale smear of a handprint where someone had steadied themselves in a hurry. The tubes weren’t pristine, but there was a difference between maintenance wear and recent passage, and Riley hunted for that difference like it was a language she could learn fast enough to matter.
A loose strip of grime along one corner. A thin arc where a boot toe had scraped. The faintest disturbance in dust where something larger than airflow had brushed past.
Come on… show me something.
She paused at the first junction she reached—where the trunk opened its options just enough to become dangerous. Riley didn’t commit to a direction yet. She leaned in, listening again, then tested the air with a subtle tilt of her head. Sometimes you caught a chemical tang that didn’t belong. Sometimes the temperature shifted toward an active conduit. Sometimes you heard the minute vibration of someone moving when they thought no one else was close enough to notice.
If Tomer had come through here, he’d have left signs. A rushed step. A scrape. A disturbed panel. Something.
Riley made herself slow down. Speed felt good, but speed was how you missed the tiny details that told the truth.
She shifted forward again, inch by inch, keeping one hand close to the plating for balance without dragging it along any surface that looked fresh. Her eyes stayed sharp, tracking every mark and smudge, building a quiet map in her head as she crawled—where the dust was heavier, where the metal was warmer, where the accessway looked just a little too recently used to be coincidence.
== GM-Input ==
Inside the Jeffries tube, what are the immediate conditions (lighting, airflow, clearance), and are there any fresh signs of passage (scuffs, residue, heat, disturbed dust) that suggest which direction Tomer went?
The go-ahead didn’t feel like relief.
It felt like a weight settling onto Riley’s shoulders—heavy, familiar, and earned.
Riley watched d’Tor’an peel off toward the torpedo bay, the Chief’s attention shifting to the wider hunt. That left Riley with the narrower problem in front of her: a scorched maintenance hatch and whatever waited beyond it.
She didn’t waste time staring after her.
Instead, she centered herself in front of the panel, kept her breathing slow, and forced her thoughts into clean lines. There was a difference between volunteering and posturing, and Riley wasn’t here to be a hero. She was here because the captain had put Tomer in her care at the start of this, and now Tomer was a suspected saboteur moving somewhere inside the ship’s bones.
You don’t get to be precious about the discomfort now.
Riley lowered into a controlled crouch and assessed the hatch without smearing her hands across it. The lock still wasn’t engaged. The seam still held that ugly, heat-fused sheen. The gouges still looked wrong—like something had hauled the panel shut when the mechanism didn’t want to cooperate.
She found a point to brace without dragging her fingers across the lip, then tested the hatch with measured pressure—more question than force. It resisted at first, then gave with a reluctant groan that raised the hair on her arms. Riley eased it up and held it there, creating a careful gap rather than yanking it wide.
She paused to listen. No obvious movement. No scrape of boots. Just the ship’s constant hum… and the faint change in airflow as the sealed space finally stopped being sealed.
Her throat tightened anyway, and not just from tension. The moment the opening existed, the Jeffries tube became real—close walls, recycled air, low clearance. A space that demanded you crawl and breathe and trust that you could back out if you needed to.
A memory tried to surface—an airlock, a too-small space, the feeling of time stretching thin.
Riley swallowed and let it pass through without letting it root. She wasn’t giving that part of her brain the steering wheel today.
Not now. Not when the ship’s at risk.
Riley shifted forward and slid into the accessway carefully, one shoulder at a time, keeping her movements deliberate so she didn’t bang her boots or rattle the paneling. The Jeffries tube closed around her fast—tight walls, hard angles, and just enough room to move if you kept yourself small.
Her heartbeat jumped, then steadied. She let the sound of her own breathing become background, something she could control, something she could use to keep her from rushing.
She didn’t push deep immediately. Instead, Riley moved with her eyes as much as her body, scanning as she went—dust patterns along the plating, scuffs on the ladder rungs, the telltale smear of a handprint where someone had steadied themselves in a hurry. The tubes weren’t pristine, but there was a difference between maintenance wear and recent passage, and Riley hunted for that difference like it was a language she could learn fast enough to matter.
A loose strip of grime along one corner. A thin arc where a boot toe had scraped. The faintest disturbance in dust where something larger than airflow had brushed past.
Come on… show me something.
She paused at the first junction she reached—where the trunk opened its options just enough to become dangerous. Riley didn’t commit to a direction yet. She leaned in, listening again, then tested the air with a subtle tilt of her head. Sometimes you caught a chemical tang that didn’t belong. Sometimes the temperature shifted toward an active conduit. Sometimes you heard the minute vibration of someone moving when they thought no one else was close enough to notice.
If Tomer had come through here, he’d have left signs. A rushed step. A scrape. A disturbed panel. Something.
Riley made herself slow down. Speed felt good, but speed was how you missed the tiny details that told the truth.
She shifted forward again, inch by inch, keeping one hand close to the plating for balance without dragging it along any surface that looked fresh. Her eyes stayed sharp, tracking every mark and smudge, building a quiet map in her head as she crawled—where the dust was heavier, where the metal was warmer, where the accessway looked just a little too recently used to be coincidence.
== GM-Input ==
Inside the Jeffries tube, what are the immediate conditions (lighting, airflow, clearance), and are there any fresh signs of passage (scuffs, residue, heat, disturbed dust) that suggest which direction Tomer went?