"They are knocking on the front door."
Kira whispered the warning as she stared at the frosted reinforced glass of the command center viewport. The thud of combat boots echoed off the impenetrable titanium hull outside the Leviathan. The soldiers were testing the structural integrity of the dead machine.
Malcolm turned away from the window. He grabbed the tow cable and dragged the experimental fusion core deeper into the dark engineering bay. The cylinder scraped against the floorboards.
"Let them knock," Malcolm said. His voice echoed in the pitch black cavernous space. "They cannot breach the external airlock without anti-tank ordnance. We have a brief window of operational silence to install the power source."
He dropped the tow cable beside the primary generator housing. The archai
