JN> There were a lot of Estral ships up there.

  BK> They’re scanning for us. Nothing I can’t evade, as long as I’m not required to discharge the Gundar’s weapons. They don’t seem any more agitated than when we first got here.

  JN> Perhaps they are unsure of their orders. Where is the SC Givens?

  BK> It’s just this second gone to lightspeed. The Estral didn’t take hostile action.

  JN> Their high command kept everything so secret, not every ship in their fleet was made aware.

  BK> That’s my guess. If it was anything else, they’d have destroyed our shuttles in flight and opened up on the Gundar and the Givens.

  Nation’s Istoliar-biological brain churned through the possibilities. The Confederation had its failings, but it didn’t abandon its people. Whatever it takes, he thought, remembering the words from all the way back in his training days.

  Keller was equally familiar with the saying.

  BK> I can have the Gundar blow that facility wide open any time you choose. You’ll need to steal your own shuttle. I can’t do that bit for you.

  JN> There are too many unknowns to just start blowing the crap out of stuff.

  BK> You think the reports of the attack on Sindar could be wrong?

  JN> I’m sure they’re right.

  BK> It might be best to wait a short time, in order to be certain.

  JN> Two hours should give me an opportunity to see what we missed here on the facility.

  BK> Don’t go too far.

  JN> An airlift down, an airlift up, steal a shuttle and away we go.

  BK> As easy as that.

  JN> Yep.

  BK> The ISOP doesn’t work on lifts, does it? Anything that isn’t a simple choice between open and close results in failure.

  JN> You got me. I’ll have to use the stairs to reach Sub-6 and hope the lower lifts haven’t been locked down.

  BK> You’d best get moving, if you aren’t already halfway there. I’ll stay here until you’re done, whatever it takes.

  JN> It’s good working with you again.

  BK> You too. As long as the Estral don’t flush out my code from the comms array, I’ll be able to stay in touch.

  JN> Okay. Got to go.

  One of the airlifts opposite opened. A group of Estral soldiers came out and no more got in. Nation made a dash for it and got inside just as the doors closed. He made a brief check to see if the deeper levels were available on the lift panel. They were still inaccessible, so he chose Sub-5. With his gauss cannon in hand, Nation stood against the rear wall of the car. He had no idea what the hell was going on here in the Isob-2 facility and it might not even be relevant anymore.

  Either way, he was going to find out.

  Chapter Ten

  The lift stopped at level Sub-5 and Nation waited for the doors to open, half expecting to find a battalion of Estral soldiers waiting to get inside. His power cells had climbed above ninety percent after his earlier use of the shockwave, but the continuous use of the stealth augmentation was a constant drain, bringing the recharge to a crawl.

  There were no Estral waiting and he dashed through the room, heading in the direction of the stairwell he’d noticed the first time Koltar-Reon had brought him and Keller this way. The Estral soldiers he’d killed earlier were exactly where they’d fallen. The shockwave blast had been a fairly high intensity and would have finished off a bigger group than this one.

  JN> They haven’t moved these dead soldiers.

  BK> I can’t believe no one noticed they were missing.

  JN> They know. This place is in chaos and I reckon they just haven’t organised a party to recover the bodies. If they even care.

  Nation reached the stairwell opening, just as four Estral soldiers ran through it. He pressed himself to one side and the troops sprinted past, their gauss cannons clattering against the sides of their armoured chest plates. Nation watched them meet up with another group coming from the opposite direction.

  JN> Things are getting hot in here. I nearly got pincered.

  He glanced at the sign overhead.

  JN> Down to Laboratory Area 1.

  BK> Lieutenant Mack warned us about the guards.

  JN> Screw them.

  The stairwell opening led to a landing area. Wide steps with high risers went up and down. Ice clung to the walls and a single lighting orb flickered wildly. Nation went carefully, finding it took an effort to get into a rhythm. At the bottom of this flight, he reached another, smaller landing, and the steps switched back on themselves. There were eight more switchbacks and on the ninth, the steps ended at an opening. He descended quickly, listening carefully for the sound of movement.

  At the bottom, Nation sprinted into the room, with stealth modules active, and his shockwave augmentation charged and ready to use against the Estral soldiers he expected to find. He pulled up short and looked around.

  JN> Empty.

  The neural link didn’t convey emotion, yet somehow Keller picked up on the nuance in that single word.

  BK> You sound disappointed. Are you still pissed about Bonner and Sasso?

  JN> Yeah. I checked their records. They were young and now they’re dead. I shouldn’t let it get to me.

  BK> Since we’re at war again.

  JN> And now anything goes.

  There wasn’t much to see in the room. A single, heavy-duty door blocked the way ahead, this being the only exit. There was a large viewscreen on the left-hand wall and an access panel to the right of the door.

  Nation activated his number cruncher and aimed it at the panel. The utilisation on his core cluster jumped to fifty percent. He overrode it and allowed it to climb to eighty percent. The lab guys didn’t like it when he came back from a mission with burned out Istoliar processors, but they didn’t want to deny him the capability in case it made the difference between life and death.

  His sensor picked up the sound of footsteps in the stairwell behind him and he swore softly.

  JN> I’ve got incoming.

  BK> How many?

  JN> Lots.

  BK> Can you handle them?

  JN> Don’t know.

  The footsteps came closer. The Estral were descending at speed, as if they had advance warning someone was hacking their door. Nation thought he would have to abandon the number cruncher in order to deal with the approaching Estral. Instead, the ISOP finished with the door security and the slab of metal rose into the ceiling. There was a long, dark passage on the other side, with green light at the far end. Nation sprinted through and smashed his hand against the panel on the laboratory side of the door as he ran. The door dropped down with an air of finality, leaving him in darkness.

  The walls and floor of the passage were slick with moisture, and it was treacherous enough that Nation was required to take extra care. His sensor augmentation kicked in automatically and it was able to cut through the darkness well enough for him to see what he needed to. The sensor processor did its best to add artificial colour to the feed, but it didn’t entirely remove the green tint from the images streamed into his brain.

  BK> How about you let me tap into your sensor augmentation? Otherwise I’m blind.

  JN> You can do that? Silly question. Of course you can do that.

  BK> I’m up here, skirting around the edges of a hostile Estral fleet, yet with nothing much to do other than watch. Until someone orders me to start shooting, that is.

  The latest Space Corps stealth modules were incredible and the Estral had yet to find a way to reliably penetrate them. Unfortunately, these modules were so expensive to manufacture only a few warships were equipped with the newest kit, the SC Gundar being one of them. Nation’s stealth augmentation was a triumph of miniaturisation, yet it was nothing like as effective as a full-sized model.

  JN> You won’t do anything other than view the feed?

  BK> I promised, didn’t I?

  JN> Fine, go ahead. No pissing about.

  BK> That’s done – I’m linked. Everything you see, I can see as well.

  There was no discernible change to his internal systems. Nation ran a diagnostic and it flagged up no anomalies. Keller was a pro, no doubt about it.

  The sound of the Sub-6 door opening made Nation twist around. He saw a large group of Estral, framed in the dim light from the room at the bottom of the stairwell. They didn’t hesitate and piled through into the passage.

  JN> Damnit, they’re coming.

  BK> They can’t know you’re there.

  JN> They can guess well enough.

  He looked to the front – the source of light he’d noticed earlier was coming from a large room. There was no visible movement, but he didn’t have enough of an angle to see everything. He paused at the entrance and looked inside.

  BK> Guard station.

  JN> Looks like. No turrets.

  BK> And no guards.

  There was only a single exit corridor, positioned on the far side of the room and behind a clear screen of toughened polymer. On the far side of the polymer wall, consoles shaped like rectangular desks were fixed to the floor, with their viewscreens facing away. Multi-lens sensor units, mounted in each of the far corners, aimed directly at the three openings in the clear screen.

  JN> They watch everyone coming through.

  BK> Must be a really secure area.

  Nation looked at the sensor units. They had no power lights on them, but that didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t operational.

  JN> Didn’t you say the lower level feeds were switched off?

  BK> Yep. Those sensors won’t be recording. They might, however, still detect you passing and trigger an alarm.

  JN> It doesn’t matter one way or another. I’ve got to go through.

  BK> The exit door might come down if the sensors detect anything unusual.

  Nation grimaced. The access panel adjacent to the exit door no doubt had top-level security on it. If the door came down, he’d be stuck using the number cruncher with a squad of Estral soldiers bearing down on him. He turned his head to better pick up the sounds of approaching troops.

  JN> Sounds like fifteen or twenty.

  BK> No point in trying to take them on.

  The weight of the gauss cannon in Nation’s hand reminded him it was there. With the Estral bunched up, it would be a devastating weapon, able to punch through the front soldier and all the way through the back one, with or without body armour. The trouble was, it was slow-firing and he’d become briefly visible every time he pulled the trigger. There was always a chance one of the Estral carried a plasma launcher and he didn’t want to get caught out by rocket splash. The aliens were still about sixty metres away and he couldn’t tell for sure what armaments they had.

  JN> Can you use the Isob-2 comms antenna to get into the base mainframe and shut those sensors off?

  BK> If you want me to. Every time I access their systems, there’s a chance they might discover what I’m doing.

  JN> What’s the worst that can happen?

  BK> They perform a detailed audit, locate my code and disable our access to the comms antenna. Then where would you be? Hmm?

  JN> Point taken.

  Without waiting any longer, Nation chose the closest opening through the polymer wall. He charged through at full speed, his eyes on the exit doorway fifteen metres away.

  Immediately, he crossed from one side of the room to the other, the green light on the access panel changed to orange.

  JN> Shit.

  He put his head down and kept going. Nation could run much faster than anyone who wasn’t packed with the Space Corps’ most advanced augmentation technology, but he couldn’t run fast enough to beat a closing security door. His brain – capable of responding far quicker than his physical body - registered the event in slow motion. A plate of metal moved from a recess in the left side of the doorway and sped across towards the right.

  JN> Not going to make it.

  Without warning, the door stuttered once, slowed and then juddered to a halt, leaving a two-foot gap to the side. Nation threw himself through the gap without slowing, put a hand against the wall to keep himself upright and sprinted on.

  JN> Thanks.

  BK> Wasn’t me.

  JN> Then what?

  BK> Power failure. Everything on the base is screwy.

  Nation ground his teeth together.

  JN> I hate relying on luck.

  BK> You should embrace it.

  The passage ended in another, even larger, open area. This space was cavernous – at least two hundred metres from one side to the other, and with a ceiling twenty metres above. There were pillars of solid alloy at regular intervals, which reached to the stone overhead. Horizontal beams joined the pillars, supporting the immense weight. In one glance, Nation spotted the network of cracks snaking across the ceiling, extending as far as he could see.

  The floor was covered at irregular intervals in a mixture of consoles, metal work benches, cylindrical analytical robots, crates, cabinets and also a rock grinder, with a long conveyor belt powered by Gallenium. Ice covered everything and it glistened in the green light. Shadows stretched their tendrils into every corner, making it hard to clearly distinguish the function of each object in the room.

  There were two exits from each of the walls, including what appeared to be a bank of airlifts on the far wall. The sounds of pursuit hadn’t faded, so Nation hurried into the room, hoping to lose the Estral amongst the piles of their own crap.

  BK> Are you going for the airlifts?

  JN> Not yet. Got to lose these Estral first. Waiting for a lift isn’t the best way to do that.

  BK> Any signs of Granol-42?

  JN> Traces only. The largest concentrations will be lower down.

  BK> You’re definitely okay with toxins?

  JN> The few parts of me which are still organic are completely shielded.

  Nation squeezed between two looming analytical devices which were covered in screens and gauges. There was no sign of life from them, as if they’d been switched off and forgotten long ago. He was certain they carried their own power units, so their inactive state struck him as odd.

  When Nation was less than halfway across the room, he heard the Estral enter through the passageway. He checked over his shoulder. He caught hints of movement and sound as the aliens picked their way through the many obstacles on the floor. Even with his stealth modules, Nation was grateful for the additional cover.

  He noticed a console on his left, which was semi-circular in shape. It was powered up, but not connected to anything and it hummed quietly. There was a dead Estral slumped on the floor behind it. This one was dressed in a civilian uniform, which provided no protection against toxins or the biting cold of a base in which the temperature was slowly falling to the ambient of Isob-2’s surface. There were no obvious marks on the alien’s body and its thick hair and eyebrows were covered in frost.

  JN> Strange.

  BK> Yeah.

  It wasn’t the best time to take an interest in a single, dead Estral, but something caught Nation’s eye. He stooped next to the body and pulled its arm so he could get a better look at its hand. The skin was black and split like it had suffered some kind of infection. The affliction spread to its wrist and then vanished underneath its sleeve.

  BK> Can you analyse that?

  JN> Yes and the cause is unknown. I’m not stopping to take skin samples.

  He stayed low and moved on. He could hear the Estral clattering on the far side of the room and coming closer. They had no realistic hope of finding him and he was surprised they hadn’t given up by now. The fact they maintained pursuit suggested they were certain of his presence.

  The airlifts were close and more brightly illuminated than the rest of the room. To the left, was another exit corridor, leading to somewhere he couldn’t see. He would have preferred to use the lifts but it left him vulnerable to explosives. As soon as the Estral saw the lift doors open, there was a chance they’d open up with plasma rockets or repeaters.

  BK> There’s plenty of time. No hurry.

  JN> Stop reading my mind. I’m going for the corridor.

  BK> There should be several banks of airlifts on each level, even if not all the ones we saw in the hangar bay go right to the bottom.

  JN> I don’t want to use the main cargo lift or anything near it. Those lifts will be crawling with Estral.

  BK> Uh-oh.

  JN> ?

  BK> The main surface hangar doors just opened and two shuttles came out.

  JN> They must know the SC Gundar is still somewhere close by.

  BK> Yet here they come.

  JN> Keep an eye on it.

  BK> You should consider aborting.

  JN> I’ve considered it.

  BK> Okay.

  Nation swore under his breath. He’d anticipated having a couple of hours to gather intel on what the Estral were keeping under wraps here on Isob-2. If the departing shuttles meant the aliens were preparing for an evacuation, that implied they were finished with the facility. They’d brought in a planet buster and Nation was absolutely certain they hadn’t done so without the intention of using it.

  He hurried on towards the exit passage.

  Chapter Eleven

  If a base-wide order to evacuate was in force, the Estral in the lab area hadn’t received it and they continued their advance. Nation took a second to find out where the nearest ones were located. He saw shapes moving between pieces of equipment, still fifty metres away. It was hard to be certain of the numbers, but Nation got a feeling they’d been reinforced from somewhere – no doubt through another of the passages.

  Without warning, something detonated twenty metres to one side in a flash of white plasma. The blast sent chairs flying through the air and nearly tore one of the consoles from its moorings. Nation dropped to the floor next to a support pillar and crawled rapidly towards his escape route.

  A second blast followed and then a third. Shards of metal pinged away from the pillar above Nation’s head and he was buffeted by a wave of hot air which his sensor advised him was in excess of two hundred degrees.