The storage room Miriya was hiding in contained uniforms and overcoats, which was fortuitous. She wrapped two layers of overcoats over each of the battloid's feet, using their sleeves to tie them in place. They wouldn't hold for long, but that was okay. They just had to muffle the sound of her footsteps for a little while.

Miriya turned up the volume of the speakers to the external microphone as far as she dared. Once she determined no one was moving anywhere nearby, she quickly lowered the volume back to normal, ripped a hole in the floor, and dropped through.

She had hoped to emerge in the fighter repair shop. Instead, she found herself in the machine parts supply room next to it. Still, not too bad, she thought. The room was deserted.

She again used the microphone to determine if anyone was near. She waited until what sounded like a platoon in the corridor marched past. Then, shuffling on her padded feet to make as little noise as possible, she left the room and crept down the corridor to the infirmary.

The infirmary was the least-used room on any Zentraedi battleship. Zentraedi had incredibly strong constitutions, and they ignored injuries and fought until they dropped dead, so not much ever happened to a Zentraedi which required medical attention.

Miriya had a plan, and it began in the infirmary. The enemy was searching for a veritech loose on the ship, but they had no way of knowing that the pilot was someone who knew her way around. That gave her an enormous advantage, one she intended to exploit to the fullest.

The medical computer was linked to the main computer, and Miriya was amused to find that her access codes had not been deactivated or changed. Such a thing would never occur to the Zentraedi. She pulled up schematics of the battleship, particularly the engine room. Since Zentraedi and human computer systems were incompatible, she couldn't load the schematics onto the veritech's computer, so she studied the plans intently, committing to memory what she needed to know. Since she already had an excellent idea of the general layout of the ship, it wasn't too difficult.

Once she had memorized her intended route, she activated each of the veritech's jets a tiny bit, one at a time, just enough to burn the padding off the battloid's feet. Then she told the medical computer to initiate emergency procedure Zeta 37.

Alarms immediately blared throughout the ship. She and the humans on board now had roughly 90 seconds to live or die.

She ran back to the machine repair shop, punched another hole through the floor, and dropped into the engine room, right in front of a startled Zentraedi who was trying to evacuate. Miriya killed her and searched for the self-destruct mechanism.

She quickly realized that looking at schematics was vastly different from looking at the real thing. It took her longer than she liked, but she found the relevant section of machinery. Instead of trying to isolate the self-destruct mechanism, Miriya just blasted the entire thing, then blasted it again for good measure.

Eliminating the self-destruct bought her maybe a couple of extra minutes.

Now for the tricky bit.

The lowest deck was the least populated, and due to the evacuation, the center of the ship would be deserted by now. So Miriya made her way to the central corridor on her current level, changed to Veritech, and just roared straight up the middle of the ship as fast as she dared.

A straggler blundered into her path. So the center of the ship isn't deserted, after all, Miriya thought. The slowpoke turned around at the sound of the veritech's engines and died with a look of shock on her face as Miriya's wing clipped her on the way by.

It took Miriya just a few seconds to reach the command deck, but it seemed much longer. It was deserted. By now, the entire ship is probably deserted, she thought. She changed back to Battloid and studied the controls.

Now for the really tricky bit.

 

The alarm did not shut off. Through the open doorway, the humans could see Zentraedi rushing down the corridor in a state of panic.

"What in the world is going on?" Max asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Lisa said, "but I think your wife might have something to do with it."

"Let's hope so," Rick said.

"Should we make a break for it?" Vanessa asked.

Minmei looked over the trolley's edge. "It's a long way down."

"It sure is," Lisa agreed. "I can't see any safe way off this thing. Let's stay put for the moment."

The corridor was now deserted. The only sound was the incessant alarm.

"Something else that's strange," Max said. "All the doors on a Zentraedi battleship are closed all the time, and only open when you approach. But this door is now standing open."

"I think it opened the moment the alarm started," Kim said.

 

Trembling with fear, Azonia sat in her personal escape pod and watched her flagship from a safe distance.

One of her senior officers contacted her. "Commander Azonia, the self-destruct time limit has passed."

Azonia opened a comm channel to her battalion. "All ships, we have a Zeta 37 on the flagship. Target the flagship and open fire at once!"

"Yes, ma'am!" they responded.

All the other battleships under Azonia's command slowly faced their own flagship and fired.

Just before the cannon barrage reached the ship, it executed a space fold and vanished.

Azonia stared in shocked silence. It took her at least ten seconds to work out what just happened. When she did, she was consumed with a white hot humiliating rage such as she had never experienced. "No!" she shouted, slamming her fist against the viewport again and again and again.

 

The captives felt a familiar vibration which filled them with dread.

"Minmei, back away from the edge!" Lisa ordered.

Minmei ran to join the others. "What's going on?" she asked.

"A space fold!" Lisa exclaimed, her voice full of distress.

Space twisted itself inside out and everyone was knocked over. A few seconds later, space reverted to normal.

"No!" Lisa wailed. "Don't take us away from the SDF-1!" She pounded her fist on the trolley again and again and again.

 

On the command deck, Miriya looked out the viewport and smiled. The stars were different. There were no battleships.

Ironically, it took her longer to figure out how to shut off the alarm than it had taken her to do anything else.

She opened the public address system and made an announcement to the entire battleship. "This is Miriya. Believe it or not, we're safe now. I don't know where you are, and you can't contact me, so just stay put and let me come find you. I'm on my way."

 

The others looked up, hardly daring to believe their ears.

"Safe?" Kim asked. "For real?"

Max, of course, was grinning from ear to ear.

Lisa calmed down. She wasn't happy about the space fold, but she had to admit that her situation had improved a million percent in the previous few minutes.

They waited. After about fifteen minutes, they heard a distant metallic thumping.

"That's the sound of a battloid walking!" Max said.

"It sure is," Rick agreed.

They shouted for Miriya, and she heard them. Her red battloid appeared in the doorway and they all cheered.

Miriya entered the room, switched to Guardian, and knelt so that the cockpit came into contact with the trolley. She raised the canopy and jumped into Max's arms and a long embrace.

When they finally pulled apart, Vanessa said, "Boy, are we glad to see you!"

"And I, you," Miriya said. "I'm pleased to see you all unharmed."

"What happened?" Lisa asked.

"The Robotech Masters built us well, but there is a disease we Zentraedi fear very much," Miriya said. "It's called Zeta 37. It's rare, but it's highly contagious and incurable. Any Zentraedi afflicted with this disease dies a prolonged, horrible death full of agony and torture.

"Every Zentraedi battleship has a special alarm, and a special protocol, to deal with Zeta 37. If the virus is detected on board, the alarm sounds, all doors open, and everyone has roughly 90 seconds to evacuate because the ship will self-destruct. If the ship fails to self-destruct, all nearby Zentraedi battleships are to destroy the ship with utmost priority. The survivors are picked up and held in quarantine for about four days.

"My race fears this disease so much that I knew a Zeta 37 alert would clear the ship, and I knew they would not take you with them. I also knew they wouldn't question the alert, because they would simply assume you are the ones who brought it on board. So I triggered the alert and disabled the self-destruct."

Miriya gave Lisa a sad look and said, "Unfortunately, the only way I could stop us from being destroyed by all the other battleships was to perform a blind space fold."

"You folded blind?" Lisa asked.

"Yes, Commander Hayes, I'm sorry. There was no other way."

"I understand," Lisa said.

"Does that mean what I think it means?" Kim asked.

"It means the space fold was random," Lisa said. "It will take days, maybe even weeks, to figure out where we are and how to get back. If we can figure it out at all."

For a moment, everyone was speechless.

Sammie finally spoke. "So, basically, the eight of us have a honking great big Zentraedi battleship all to ourselves, but we're too small to use it, and we have no idea where we are or how to get back to the SDF-1?"

"That's about the size of it," Miriya said. "Welcome aboard!"