This time Ben handled the teleportation better, but had to stand still for a moment and wait for the dizziness to pass. Above him was a huge hole in the body of the ship, and he could see another ship hovering in space a few kilometers out. Responding to a slight change of pressure in his suit, he noticed that his oxygen level was slowly going down. "I'm in a vacuum," he muttered to himself, mainly to hear the familiar sound of his voice. It was comforting here, light years away from home and Rowena, with space stretching out before him and nothing between him and eternity but a force sheild and the ship's artificial gravity. "Oh, dammit, Durandal," he muttered, looking around for a terminal. There was one near him, to his left, and he went to it.

Seems like you arrived alright. On both sides of this room are open doors. You need to close them. There is one switch, and it's down in the ventilation corridors somewhere. Hurry. I've been able to temporarily contain the vacuum, but the doors need to be sealed or the ship will run out of oxygen reserves sooner than we need to deal with.

"Somewhere?" Ben cried. "Somewhere?! Durandal!" When the AI didn't reply he pounded on the terminal. "What the hell do you mean, somewhere? You're a friggin' AI!"

I wouldn't waste air if I were you. I'll try to teleport you some, but if I can't I don't know if there are any fill-ups here.

He pounded the terminal again in frustration. "You gotta have access to blueprints. Show me a damn map, at least."

--Searching--

A map appeared on the screen. There were two red circles on it - Ben's location and the switch. The rest of the map was a maze. The ventilation corridors spawned the entire ship. If this was were the Pfhor entered, they could have easily made it to the most remote parts of the ship in less than an hour. If Ben got lost in the corridors, he might never find the necessary switch. He studied the map for a long time, and then turned to the door on his right. His oxygen was down by a quarter.
With Durandal's map well-burnt into his mind, he started down the corridors. There was almost no light, so he found himself feeling the walls on both sides of him, with his gun on his belt. After almost ten minutes of making his way through the corridors with painstaking slowness, he saw the blue stripe denoting his oxygen level was only an eighth of its full length. He closed his eyes and looked at the remembered image of the map, florescent green lines against a black background. Opening his eyes again, he walked forward. One more corner. He turned. There it was. He threw the switch, and after a moment his oxygen tank turned off. He unlocked his helmet. Air. He could freely breathe again.
That bubbling sound. A Pfhor voice. Wait. Two of them. He locked on his helmet and drew his fusion pistol, but his motion sensor showed nothing. The voices came again, arguing about something, by the sound of it. They were in one of the rooms along the corridor, but he had no way to tell which one. Down the hall a little way a grating let the light in from the room below. As quietly as possible he went to it, and knelt to look. Two blue-clad, tall Pfhor, each carrying a shock stick, were looking up at the grate. They had heard him. After a long, silent moment one of them looked down and said something to the other. They began to argue again, and the effect given by their face masks was one of eerie ventriloquy. As Ben watched, the more assertive of the two lifted his stick and fired. The other was knocked back, and retaliated with two bolts of its own. The first one fell dead, and its killer knelt down and pulled a disc from the corpses armor.
Wasting no time, he pulled the grate up and jumped into the room below. The Pfhor was already out, and he raced out of the closing door. The alien was running down the well-lit hall far ahead, but two fusion bolts quickly killed it, and the disc went flying from its hand. As Ben knelt down to pick it up a door beside him opened and a host of Pfhor poured out. In an instant he was surrounded by shock sticks and machine guns and shoulder cannons. He couldn't understand what they were saying, but one of them snatched the disc from him as he fired his fusion pistol over and over...

"Santini! Santini!"
Ben's eyes snapped open. He was in a dim room - still on the Marathon, according to the symbol on the inoperative terminal on the other wall. His sheilds were down to less than a quarter, and after a quick, nearly panicked search he discovered that all of his weapons were gone, too. He strained to listen for the voice that had awaken him, but the silence only made his head pound more. He decided he must have dreamed it, and stood up to further investigate his surroundings. He checked the terminal just in case, and then went to the door. It was locked. "What the hell...?" he moaned.
"Dammit. Santini!"
It was coming from the other side of the door. "Who's there?" Ben hissed.
"It's Miller!" she replied, her voice far away and distorted through the door. "Listen, I killed the guards, but I can't find any way to open the door."
Typical of her, Ben thought. She probably didn't even think of trying to get them to open it for her. He stopped as he realized that he would've done the same thing. "Okay," he called to her. "Any ideas, then? I need sheilds and weapons."
"Is there a grate in the ceiling? The ventilation ducts go all over this ship."
Of course. The maze. He looked up. There was a grate, and if he hit it just right... It moved, and he pushed it again. "Okay, Miller," he whispered back to the door.
"Good. Get up there, and try and go west to the hallway."
He pulled himself up into the ventilation ducts. The corridor stretched almost perfectly north and south, according to the compass in his helmet, and he slowly made his way forward about five yards to an intersection, where he turned left. Another few yards, and he came to a grate that was quickly removed, and he jumped down. Asha was standing to his right, holding out a .44.
"Here," she said. "Use this for now. We'll try and find more later."
Ben took the gun, nodding his thanks. The Marathon was captured by biped bugs in deep space, and as far as he knew, he and Asha were on their own to rescue it. An experienced Black Razor, Ben knew that in this situation lines of status were all but nonexistant. The person who gave the orders was the one who knew what they were talking about. "Where to?" he said to her.
"We're in the cell bloc on the cargo deck," she said. "I'm pretty sure there's more of ours in the rest of these cells, but they're drugged or something."
"Why didn't the bastards just kill us?"he muttered. The idea of being a prisoner on his own ship wasn't appealing.
Asha didn't look at him. "They're slavers, sir. Listen, somewhere down here there's weapons and a way to open these cells. It's a huge ship, sir, with a huge cargo deck. We could be searching forever."
"What about the AI's?"
She shrugged. "You can try. I can't get them to tell me anything. One of them - Durandal - says they need to talk to you."
At the end of the hall there was a terminal, and Ben accessed it. "Leela, we need help," he said, almost to himself.

You got out. Wonderful. Durandal controls these doors, and he's in the beginning stages of rampancy. In layman's terms, he's going crazy. I have no detection of Tycho - I think the Pfhor have downloaded him to get our secrets. Down this hall is the cargo hold, and I'm sure you'll find enough weapons and sheilds to meet your needs. In that room is the switch that manually opens these cells. Most of the crew is locked up here, so I would do that first. Afterwards come back here. You still need to shut down those computers.

"Let's go," he said to Asha, and they started down the hall.
Finally, after countless locked doors, they found the cargo hold. Both of them grabbed as much weaponry and ammunition as they could carry, and Ben found a 3X sheilds power-up cartridge. The Pfhor had apparently taken the disc along with his weapons, and he wondered if that had been Tycho.
"Santini!" Asha called. "I found the switch."
"Hit it, then," he called back.
"You'd better come here, sir."
Sighing, Ben followed her voice and found her standing in front of crates and crates of SPNKR missiles. Following her gaze, he craned his head upwards. On the wall thirty feet above them was a yellow switch. "Are you sure that's it, Miller?"
"There's no other ones in this room, sir."
"Shit." He stared at it. "It's too far for a grenade-"
"Sir, the missiles. If we screw up-"
"We won't screw up." Stepping back, Ben drew his fusion pistol and aimed it upwards. He fired. The bolt hit the switch, but nothing happened. "Damn." He aimed again, and this time pulled the secondary trigger. There was a high-pitched whine as the gun prepared an overloaded bolt, and he released the trigger. The over-charged plasma bolt hit its target, and a digital screen lit up red with Baersonnis letters. The halls echoed with opening doors. "Okay. Let's go see how drugged these people are."
The crew, in fact, hadn't been drugged at all. Instead they had been knocked out, as Ben had, and many of them had come around hours ago. When the doors opened they flooded into the hall, cautious at first, and ready to fist-fight any Pfhor who got in their way. The only ones they came across were the broken, bleeding corpses of the ones Asha had already gotten to.
Ben came out into the hall and watched the crowd for a moment. The technicians and other crew, who knew where they were on the ship, went straight for the weapons, talking enthusiastically, however seriously, of taking their vessel back. The soldiers quickly caught on, and a host of people were soon in the cargo hold, arming themselves to the teeth. The crew, for the most part, were only trained with the .44's, so each grabbed two and as much ammunition as he could carry. Regular soldiers collected a much wider variety, but only the Black Razors were qualified for the SPNKR rocket launchers and the napalm flame throwers.
Looking around, Ben saw that he was the highest-ranking person in the room. He jumped up on a pile of crates and shouted for attention. As the room went quiet he motioned for Asha to stand next to him. "How well do you know their language?"
She smiled. "You're gonna give orders, and you want me to translate."
"I'm ordering you to, if you can."
Asha shrugged. "Fine. You tell the Earthers, I'll tell the Taerians. Don't make it too complicated."
Nodding, Ben turned back to the crowd of soldiers and crew. He talked slowly, giving Asha time to translate. "Stay in groups of at least three or four. Kill all the bugs you see. Search the bodies, and pick up any computer discs they're carrying. Find the captain."