Free Guardians of the Galactic Sentinel 1: The Deimos Artifact by Phillip Nolte Page B

minutes.
    "It should be okay. We've still got an hour so before we shift into sublight. I'll get a warning over my tablet if anything needs my attention. Lead on."
    The trio, with Cliff leading and Beth bringing up the rear, went through the hatch on the aft bulkhead of the bridge and down a short, three-step, inclined ladder to a compartment that was some four meters long under a ceiling just over two meters high. There was a generous-sized cabin on either side of the chamber with the one to port marked "Captain," and the other unlabeled.
    "This is deck three," said Cliff. "There's two more decks below, except when you get forward of the first main bulkhead and aft of the fourth one. These were Marv's quarters over here." He motioned towards the unlabeled cabin, "I expect you'll be takin' them over, Zack. The other big cabin's for you, Cap'n. The two of you might want to get your gear stowed up here before too long."
    Beth took a quick look inside the Captain's quarters, "Nice!" she said, noting that it was very well appointed and even included a small commode area that doubled as an ultrasonic shower stall. As she came back out, her attention was immediately drawn to something unconventional about the aft bulkhead, "What's with all the oddball hatches? I saw a couple of them earlier and wondered what was going on."
    The hatch in the aft bulkhead, usually centered on ships of this type, was noticeably offset to port. The spot where the central hatch would normally have been had a patch welded over it and the entire bulkhead had been freshly painted.
    "Why don't we have a look?" said Cliff, as he went through the non-standard hatch, "Follow me."
    Beth and Zack went through the hatch right behind him, immediately discovering that the corridor wall to their left angled inward at a forty-five degree angle, back towards the center of the ship, where it joined up with what must have been the original central corridor of the deck. Ignoring the angled section of wall for the moment, Beth went over and looked down the length of the rejoined central corridor, estimating that it ran aft for at least another twenty meters, "Is this entire level nothing but accommodations?"
    "Pretty much," replied Cliff, "Marv's wife used the ship to entertain clients and stuff. There were eight cabins on either side, but after this latest mod, there's only six left. Behind that far bulkhead is all engineering stuff."
    "And what's behind this angled wall?"
    "For that we need to go down to the deck two," said Cliff.
    The three of them went back through the angled corridor and headed down a rather long ladder that ran diagonally across the ship from port to starboard on its way down to deck two. They came down into a good sized L-shaped chamber. The long arm of the L ran forward along the starboard side of the ship and doubled as a small waiting area and a corridor that led to another diagonal ladder that went down to deck one. The hatch in the aft bulkhead was offset as well.
    "More offset corridors?" said Beth.
    "Yeah," said Cliff, "only this stuff was part of the original design. Marv's wife had this area of deck two outfitted so she could host business meetings when the ship was docked."
    On the port side of the waiting area, a couple of meters apart, were two doors, one marked "Gentlemen" and the other "Ladies."
    "Are these restrooms?" asked Beth, "They're huge!"
    "Yeah," replied Cliff, "but they only work when the ship is hooked up to a docking bay. We never use 'em so we just keep 'em locked. Marv had plans to take 'em out and put something else here, but we never got around to it."
    "Amazing!" said Beth.
    "There's more," said Cliff, "Follow me."
    The trio went through the starboard hatch to the corridor that led aft, "Down here to port is the meetin' room. She wanted it to be as big as they could make it, so they put this corridor clear over to starboard. The room had seating for fifty people and all kinds of audio-visual equipment." Cliff led them