Another flutter of soft laughs.

  Andi was amazed at the crew’s spirits, notwithstanding the brief somber moment they’d shared. She knew they were scared, had to be scared. They’d had a close call coming in, and while they’d escaped—by the slimmest of margins—it was damned near certain they hadn’t seen the last danger the mission had in store for them.

  Though only Barret, the Cap, and I really saw how close we came to…

  The others knew, of course. She was sure of that. There were different personalities on Nightrunner, some she felt closer to than others. But none of them were fools.

  She looked around, grabbing a quick glance at each of her shipmates. They had smiles of a sort on their faces, and a few were still chuckling. But she saw the truth in their eyes. They were scared, every one of them. As scared as she was.

  Morale was a tricky thing, she’d come to realize. The dynamics of a group facing danger were far different than those of an individual. Andi had a bag of tricks she’d long used to push herself forward when terror threatened to hold her back, but they were all internal, manipulations she could only use on herself.

  The camaraderie she was seeing around her…it was the crew’s way, their own trick. They’d pushed the narrow escape away from their thoughts, and now they were ready to go inside the ancient space station, to do what they had come to do. Obsessing over the risks, both past and in front of them, could only sap their spirit, and distract them. That would make them less ready, more exposed to whatever threats lay ahead.

  She wasn’t sure if some of them were thinking of huge scores, of stunningly valuable technology, of returning to Dannith in triumph. Probably. Others were probably more focused on the urge to get it done, to go inside, search the place, and get back to Nightrunner as soon as possible for the trip home. She was sure it was a combination of thoughts and mental tricks that fortified Nightrunner’s crew, steeled their nerves as they stepped onto the station. None of it meant they weren’t scared to death.

  They would all do what they’d come to do. And she would, too.

  “Alright, Tyrell, Doc…you stay on Nightrunner, and do what you can to keep a scanning beam on us.” The old imperial hull materials were proof against scans, at least any made with devices of Rim technology levels, but there was some chance, at least, that the soon to be open hatch would allow Nightrunner’s sensors to at least keep tabs its crew members as they moved deeper within.

  “On it, Cap.” Tyrell was standing close to the back of the group in the corridor, and he moved a few steps toward the bridge.

  “The rest of you, let’s go. Stay close, and whatever you do, nobody get lost. This thing’s huge, and if you wander somewhere and can’t find your way back, you’re probably screwed.” He paused. “With any luck, those laser buoys were all that was left of the defensive systems. If so, we might just have a cakewalk the rest of the way…head inside and scoop up a bunch of serious old tech.” He hesitated again. “But we’re not going to count on that, you hear me?”

  He looked around, acknowledging a series of nods.

  “Everybody packed?”

  Another ripple worked down the small group, this time including a few grunts of acknowledgement. Andi ran her hand down to her waist. Her knife was there, and her pistol. And she could feel the rifle strapped across her back. She was ready.

  She was packed.

  She added her own semi-intelligible response to the mix, and then she stood still and silent for a moment, while Lorillard opened the airlock hatch and stepped inside.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Abandoned Imperial Station

  Orbiting Zensoria, Osiron VI

  Year 301 AC

  Andi shivered, a sudden, uncontrollable shake that ripped its way through her body. There was just something about the corridor, about the space station itself, that cut through her defenses. She had braved the harsh and filthy streets of the Gut, crawled through tunnels and sewers, faced enemies and dangers of all kinds and survived to tell about it. But she’d never seen anyplace as completely…different…as the corridors she and her comrades were passing through.

  The walls were white, almost impossibly so, as though they had defied dust and wear for more than three centuries. The material looked almost like a high-gloss plastic, but to the touch, it was cool, feeling like a metal of some kind. The hallway was lit from the ceiling, though there were no visible fixtures or lamps, just a constant glow that seemed dim when stared at, yet provided more than adequate illumination.

  The lighting, of course, also testified to the continued at least partly operational status of the station, as did the functioning life support. That is, of course, assuming the deadly laser attack on Nightrunner hadn’t already pushed aside all thoughts of the station as a cold, dead hulk.

  The breathable atmosphere and tolerable temperature certainly made the mission more physically comfortable. The crew all wore their survival suits under their normal clothes, and their helmets hung from clasps at their waists. Just in case. There was no way of knowing if the habitable conditions would continue, or if they would need their own life support to get back to Nightrunner.

  Andi had wondered if they should risk the environment at all, and she’d almost suggested they go in with full gear in place. She’d only held back when it was clear that no one else, the captain included, seemed to share her thoughts. She knew they had to be aware of the risks, but they seemed comfortable enough simply to be ready to switch over if necessary.

  Andi didn’t have too much trouble going along with the rest. She hated the damned survival outfit as much as the others did, and besides, this way they were saving their power and air in case the need arose. She’d rather have the full two hours of life support from the moment a crisis struck, and not have to face an unexpected problem with half a tank or less remaining.

  She wasn’t sure how much of the choice came down to all of them justifying their desire for greater comfort, but she convinced herself it made sense, at least enough to push the doubts away.

  There was even a reasonable simulated gravity generated by the ring’s slow revolution around the station’s core. It was just a little heavier than Parsephon’s, or for that matter, most artificial gravity systems in the Confederation. But whoever had designed the thing had likely come from far coreward, from a world in the heart of the old empire, and not in a fringe sector like the Rim.

  A place where billions once lived, with technology beyond anything we’ve ever seen.

  A place that is dead now, an empty graveyard, slowly wasting away under the onslaught of merciless time.

  Andi wasn’t sure it was more than an old spacer’s myth, but she’d heard more than once that planets tended to get larger the closer they were to the galactic core.

  She took a deep breath, trying again to settle her nerves, to keep the almost alien feel of the station from shaking her focus. She’d prospected for old imperial technology before, of course, but she usually looked at it all in a somewhat clinical way. As far as she was concerned, they could easily have been searching for platinum, or gemstones, or anything else of value. But this time, it was different.

  This time, the reality took shape in her mind, and she realized they were seeking the creations of people who’d been dead for three centuries, the handiwork of scientists and engineers and technicians, all of whom had faced the Cataclysm.

  Who’d been destroyed by it.

  She looked ahead, steering her focus to the present, to the reality laying before her. The corridor was long, stretching out of sight into the distance, and so far, there hadn’t been any turnoffs or intersections, nor even a hatch leading anywhere. That seemed strange to her. Andi was no expert in spacecraft architecture, but she was pretty sure they were heading straight through one of the rings, and that meant there was something to either side of them, whether there was an accessible entrance or not.

  She stopped for a second, abruptly. She’d heard something. Again.

  It was a distant sound, faint, almost like metal knocking on metal. She looked around, as she had the other two times she’d heard it, but no one else had seemed to notice. She was the youngest by at least ten years, and it wasn’t the first time her hearing had proven more sensitive than the others’.

  “Cap, I keep hearing something. It’s faint, far away. But it’s definitely there, maybe every two minutes or so.” She wondered if he was going to brush her off or tell her she was hearing things, but he just stopped and turned to look back at her.

  “Still hear it?”

  She paused silently, listening. “No, Cap. It stopped. That’s what it did the other times, too.”

  “It’s probably some system deeper in the station…most likely nothing to worry about.” He didn’t sound like he felt all that relaxed about it, and Andi knew damned well that she didn’t. “Still, Andi…tell me as soon as you hear it again, and the rest of you, stay focused and listen. See if any of you can catch anything.”

  They all stood where they were for perhaps twenty seconds, and then Lorillard waved for them to follow as he continued forward. Andi stated walking again, right behind Gregor—not a bad place to be, she’d thought when the marching order shook down that way. At least not if the threat comes from the front.

  They moved about another hundred meters, when Andi heard the sound again. She reached out behind her, tapping Anna on the shoulder. Her shipmate spoke almost immediately, before Andi could say anything, and said, “I hear it, too, Andi.”

  “It seems pretty regular.” Andi paused a few seconds, listening. “It feels like it’s been on a consistent schedule. Maybe it is some kind of regular system, and we’re just hearing it here.”

  Anna nodded. “It could be, and if it is, we should try to head toward it.” Anna’s tone was odd. The idea of heading in the direction of the sound made sense, but there were doubts there, too.

  “You may be right, Anna, but first, we’re going to have to find a way to go anywhere but straight ahead…or straight back.” Lorillard had stopped and turned. “So, until we can find another choice, we might as well just continue.” He swung back around and took a couple steps forward before stopping again. “And, Andi…see if you can confirm that it’s on a regular schedule.”

  The group moved forward again, and the sound repeated twice more. Andi had confirmed the timing, using her chronometer to get an exact time on the last two. It was exactly two minutes sixteen seconds from the completion of one to the start of the next. She wasn’t sure whether to feel relief or apprehension at the regularity, so she split the difference, and did both.

  The group’s movement slowed a moment later, and then it came to a stop. Lorillard was at the head of the line, and he was standing in front of a hatch, one that was familiar.

  It was familiar because it was an airlock, just like the one they’d entered through. They’d walked from one side of the ring straight across to the other, and they hadn’t found a single corridor or hatch leading anywhere. It didn’t make any sense. Andi was tracing her thoughts back over the entire stretch, trying to figure out what they had missed.

  “Alright, we’re going to head back the way we came, but this time, we’re going to stop every fifty meters and do some intensive scans. There’s something behind these walls…we don’t need more than geometry to tell us that. And, if there are compartments, there has to be some way in. I know these walls are scan-resistant, but all we need to find is a section that’s…different. If there are no doors we can see, there must be doors we can’t see. And, however well-camouflaged, there has to be some difference, some kind of concealed mechanism or lock, and, we’re damned well going to find it.”

  The rest of the crew nodded, and a few acknowledged verbally. Andi had been thinking almost exactly what Lorillard had said, and she turned around, reaching behind her and pulling out the small, portable scanner from her sack. She and Jammar had the miniature units. Gregor had the larger, high-powered scanner, along with most of the other heavy gear. It was the curse of being the largest member of the crew by a good fifty kilos.

  Andi flipped the unit on and held it facing the wall as she began walking back the way they had come. She slowed her pace considerably, to give the unit the time to penetrate the ancient material of the walls. She didn’t know what to expect, whether the small scanner would be able to find anything but, in the end, it was only a few seconds before she saw it.

  It wasn’t much, just a small blip. But she stopped and moved back and forth twice, confirming the initial result. There was something…different…there. She wasn’t sure if it was open space beyond, or some kind of mechanical or electronic device—no doubt, there were both—but she was sure it was something.

  “I’ve got a definite reading here, Cap.” She paused. “I have no idea what it is, but it’s there.”

  “I’ve got one, too, Cap.” Jammar’s voice was deep, shrouded in his thick Physalian accent. That had given Andi one hell of a time understanding her shipmate when she’d first come aboard, but she’d long since gotten fairly use to understanding what he said.

  Lorillard stood silently for a few seconds before he started barking out orders. “Okay, let’s figure all this out. Barret, behind me. Keep an eye in that direction…just in case. Anna, get back to the other end and stand guard there.” Andi didn’t know what might come at them from either side of the empty corridor, but she still agreed completely with the captain’s caution.

  “Gregor, get that bigger unit set up. Maybe it can get a little deeper, give us something useful.” He turned his head. “Sylene, help Gregor…and get your own gear set up. As high tech as this place is, I’m betting the locks, hatches—everything—are AI controlled. I know it’s a lot on your plate to hack into imperial tech like this, but if we can’t get anywhere but this corridor, we’ve come a damned long way for nothing.”

  Gregor nodded, and he reached around, sliding the massive pack from his back and setting it down.

  Sylene had been behind Andi, and she worked her way toward the big man and the scanner suite he was already beginning to assemble. Sylene was Andi’s closest friend on Nightrunner, a connection most would have pegged as unlikely. The programmer—and accomplished hacker—had a skillset that was almost the counterpart of Andi’s own.

  Sylene was massively educated, a celebrated professor at one of the Confederation’s most prestigious universities, until some kind of scandal—the details of which she had never shared with anyone but the captain—ended that celebrated career. She was a virtuoso at bending computer systems to her will, and disillusioned and bitter at how she’d been treated in her former, very mainstream position, she’d rejected the private sector jobs she’d been offered, and ended up in Dannith’s Spacer’s Guild, one of the very few specialists there with even a prayer of decoding imperial information systems.

  Sylene was the least violent of Nightrunner’s crew, the worst fighter by a good margin. Andi, on the other hand, didn’t look like a deadly danger to anyone—at least anyone who didn’t look too closely into her cold eyes—but all of her comrades knew just how dangerous she was.

  Andi watched her friend crouch down next to Gregor and help the giant get the scanner set up. The tension lay heavily over them all. The station was a technological marvel, no doubt, and it was in the best condition—by far—from any other facility the crew had investigated, but there was still a haunted feel to it. Its aura felt not only of crew members long dead, but a while civilization lost, the great empire that had ruled humanity for millennia.

  Andi, was nervous, edgy, and she found her hand moving down, sliding lightly over her holstered pistol. There was no enemy anywhere she could see, no signs of any imminent danger, but that didn’t stop her.

  The danger was there. She knew it was, somehow. And no matter how careful they were, how prepared, she knew something with a rock-solid certainty she couldn’t explain.

  When it happened—whatever was going to happen—they weren’t going to be ready for it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Abandoned Imperial Station

  Orbiting Zensoria, Osiron VI

  Year 301 AC

  “Another one bites the dust!” Sylene had been hunched forward, staring intently at the large tablet she’d set up in front of her. She’d been working steadily for more than an hour, but then, suddenly, a section of the shiny white wall vibrated. An instant later, there were visible lines around the edges, the clear delineation of a door or hatch of some kind, one that had been completely invisible just seconds before.

  The programmer turned hacker leaned back, sitting on the floor of the corridor, and Andi could see from her expression, the shout had been almost a reflex action. Sylene looked anything but confident or triumphant, and her persona had never been the cocky sort so prevalent in her profession.

  “Nice, Sy.” Lorillard had been sitting, looking deep in his own thoughts, but he reacted immediately to her exclamation. “That looks like a hatch of some kind…” A short pause. “Can you get it open?”

  “Honestly, Cap, I’m not sure how I did that. This system is…incredible. It’s so far ahead of anything we’ve got on the Rim. I spent most of the last hour just trying to get in. I think I managed to trigger an unlocking sequence, but I’m not even sure of that. I’m as likely to electrocute us all or make poison gas come out of the thing as get it open.”

  “My money is on you, Sy. Nobody knows these systems better than you do. I trust you…we all trust you.” There were a few nods, not exactly half-hearted, but not rousing signs of confidence either. It wasn’t doubts about Sylene, Andi knew, but everyone was very aware just how advanced the station’s systems were, how far beyond anything they’d seen before.

  At least anything still operational. It wasn’t just Sylene hacking into a system…it was a live system that could decide to strike back, to counter a perceived threat with whatever defense systems it had available.