Shadows in Flight, enhanced edition

he had a coagulant pad in place and anesthetic was doing its job.
    "Can you still use your tongue?" asked Sergeant. "Talk?"
    Carlotta made a try. The anesthetic was numbing her tongue a little, but she could move it. "Talk fine," she said.
    Ender came back then. "How's she doing?"
    "Just soft flesh damage under the jaw. Nothing to the throat, and the meds will have it all healed up in a couple of hours."
    "Wish I knew how long the sedatives would hold," said Ender.
    "What were you doing in there?" asked Sergeant.
    That's when Carlotta realized Ender must have gone inside the chamber that the rabs had come out of.
    "It's a breeding chamber. They were protecting their young."
    "Any queens?" asked Sergeant.
    "More like seals -- mothers and their pups gathered around them. Huge room. I think it's the control center," said Ender. "All the cabling is routed through there. Ductwork everywhere, ducts filled with cables and wires, lots of maintenance doors on everything."
    "Let's go before they wake up," said Sergeant. "I think this might still be the level of the helm or helms. If all the controls are routed through the hub, they must be coming from somewhere and leading to somewhere. Might be on this level."
    But it wasn't. It was on the next level aft, which they reached an hour later. They also learned that the recovery time from the sedative mix was longer than that hour, because no rabs woke up. For all they knew, the fog was lethal and they'd never wake up.
    Carlotta knew the door of a helm room when she saw it. It lay in the floor beneath their feet, and it was exceptionally wide and high. There was also a window in the door, and there was light on the other side. Bright light. Sunlight. They were on the side of the ship facing the sun right now.

     
    "This isn't it," she said. "There has to be a way to block the sunlight when it's shining in the ports, and it isn't being blocked. But it'll be a room like this, farther along."
    It took a while to work their way around the ship. They fogged the corridors as they went, because there was debris -- but a lot less. And then Carlotta realized something and made them stop. "This sedative is going to work against the pilots, too -- they're bound to be biologically related to Formics, even if they aren't Formics themselves. We've got to wait for the fog to dissipate before we open a door."
    "The ventilation system is slow," said Ender.
    "Maybe we want them to get a little dose of the sedative," said Sergeant. "Not a full spray, but whatever seeps in from the corridor."
    "They won't like it," said Carlotta.
    "If they're asleep, they won't mind anything," said Sergeant.
    Carlotta conceded the point, though she still didn't like it. They opened the next helm door, a fifth of the way around the ship, where the sunlight wasn't so direct. It was a helm all right, several Formic-shaped perches and control sets. Lots of unlabeled dials and displays that consisted of arrangements of small lights. And perches in front of the viewports, so observers could be stationed there.
    But there wasn't a soul in the room. Not even a corpse.
    "Proof of concept, anyway," said Sergeant. "Now we know that helm rooms are arranged symmetrically around the hull, and not hidden away in the hub."
    "And we know the Formics wanted to look, not just take the Hive Queen's data," said Ender.
    "Or this is how she got her data," said Carlotta.
    "Could be," said Sergeant. "Observers in all the helm rooms, but actual pilots in only one."
    "So let's go find the one," she said.
    Sergeant seemed not to mind that she had, in effect, preemptively given the order. He led the way back into the corridor. No need for more spray -- the fog they had originally sprayed was still spreading through this corridor all the way around the ship. In smaller concentration, it wasn't so quick -- there were rabs still waggling their limbs and jaws. But Sergeant and Ender didn't spray again. These rabs weren't trying to attack anything, they were trying to stay awake. And failing.
    The third helm was dark. Nightside. But when Carlotta shone her helmlight on the door, she pointed to shininess on the metal near the lower and upper sills. This door had been opened repeatedly in recent years.
    They got in position. Carlotta stood away from where the opening would be -- lesson learned -- and shifted the lever. The door slid open.
    Nothing came out. Not a sound from inside.
    Sergeant lowered himself into the room and drifted downward, toward