Lex pulled into the lab's hangar and landed the ship. Once he stepped out, he walked a wide circle around it. Despite the extended dogfight, some combination of his reflexes and the no doubt overpowered shield Karter had installed had kept his ship almost perfectly untouched. An embarrassingly large chunk of his mind had been preoccupied with keeping his ship safe not because he was inside of it and he would probably die if he didn’t, but because he'd just gotten it fixed and it looked gorgeous.
“Not a scratch on it . . .” he said, in disbelief.
“Excellence flightiness, Mr. Alexander,” Ma said.
“Nice shooting, Ma!” he exclaimed. “That was nuts out there! And we did it! Oh, man, if you had a body, I would kiss you right on the lips!”
“I appreciate the sentimentality,” she said.
“Where is Karter? I need to high five someone before my head explodes!”
“Mr. Dee is attempting to access a lowered level Labrador in accessibility section five to restoration an importance component to functionality. Many doorways and lifts are malfunctioning. I will lead you to him shortly. I mustard reboot systems affected byway the data corruption, including myself.”
“You gonna be okay?”
“Yes. Do note worries. I william be back to fully functionality in six minutes. Systems will become coming backward online in orders of priorities. I am lasting.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you then.”
There was a crackle and beep on the loudspeaker as Ma finally dropped away to straighten herself out. Lex, with nothing else to do, decided it would be nice to get some food in his stomach. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find that cafeteria. He’d been there before. As he headed off toward the stairs, he thought he heard a door shut at the other end of the hangar.
“Karter? That you?” he asked.
The only reply was his echo. Lex shrugged and pushed open the door to the stairwell.