“The captain’s quite right, of course,” Farnese stood behind her, so close she could smell him. “It’s a very old trick and lots of inexperienced captains are only too happy to fall for it.”

  “I’m sorry, gentlemen,” she said feeling her way. “But, a trap? How does that work?”

  “In the old days they used to drop mines, although that’s less effective against these more modern ships. Nowadays it’s more likely to be loiter missiles. You’ve heard of those, I take it?”

  Farnese’s patronising tone had taken her by surprise – she expected his support in this - but she refused to back down.

  “No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”

  “Not many civilians have, don’t you find that, captain?”

  Meyer gave a short bark by way of response.

  “A ship can drop a series of such missiles in her wake. They aren’t active as such, so they don’t show up on the pursuing ship’s radar.”

  “Until it’s too late,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Farnese smiled. “Now you’re getting it. The loiter missile’s systems are activated by the approach of the chasing ship and, since the second ship is invariably pursuing at speed, its shields provide little in the way of protection. Can be very unfortunate for those involved.”

  “Very unfortunate,” Meyer re-iterated.

  The screen shifted to show the interior of the orbital station. From what they were seeing, there seemed to have been some sort of stampede. Word must have gotten out about the impending attack and there were bodies everywhere. Ardent tried not to look too closely but it was difficult not to see the tiny broken bodies strewn about the floor.

  “This is intolerable,” she said, struggling to control her anger. “We have to do something to help these people.”

  The camera shifted again to Bud Selig’s bridge. He was leaning in, adjusting something on the camera.

  “This is Captain William Selig of The Galaxian, sending out a distress signal.”

  Meyer raised his hand and clicked his fingers twice, impatient for someone to end the broadcast.

  “For God’s sake,” Ardent shouted. “Let the man speak!”

  “We were in the process of boarding passengers from the orbital station at Laxx when we came under attack from a Da’al battle cruiser. After my calls for help were ignored by the Renheim, the only Confederation vessel operating in the area, I felt that I was left with no other choice but to break off from the embarkation process. I have given the order for the main hatches to be secured in the full knowledge that this may well jeopardise the lives of those passengers who are still attempting to come aboard. I aim to cast off despite warnings from the port authority who have yet to grant me the necessary clearance to leave in spite of this being a humanitarian mission. We hope to be given clearance to depart in the next few minutes.”

  The words themselves might have seemed harmless enough but there was no hiding the sense that this was a direct ultimatum aimed squarely at the port authority.

  Let us go peacefully or we won’t be held accountable for the consequences.

  Selig paused briefly to consult with one of his officers before turning back again.

  “We are in the lap of the gods here and can only hope for a favourable outcome,” Selig seemed to gather himself at this point, bringing his face closer to the camera. “But Captain Meyer, if you’re listening. Captain Klaus Meyer…”

  “Switch it off!” Meyer was screaming. “Switch it off!”

  “Captain Meyer, do I need to remind you that, before this all began, you made promises of protection both to myself and my crew, promises, sir, which you have resolutely failed to keep. You may well survive this coming action, captain, but I promise you this. The people of this system have now seen you for what you are and will not suffer to stand by and watch as you repeatedly bring shame upon yourself and the Confederation you claim to serve. Sir, you are a disgrace to your uniform and it can only be a matter of time before you are stripped of your rank. Captain William Selig, out.”

  The bridge went extremely quiet after that with the senior crew moving about their business with their heads down, keen not to engage anyone in eye contact.

  Ardent found herself an unattended console and got to work checking the scans of the alien vessel. But the information raised as many questions as it answered. The Da’al appeared to be large, fast battle cruiser and, from its earlier activity, well-armed. And that was it, as soon as they attempted to analyse its multi-layered hull they ran into difficulties. The outer hull appeared to be protected by some kind of super conducting grid which essentially de-activated any incoming ordnance - the same initial problem Faulkner had faced before he’d over-ridden it with the EMP from a nuclear blast. The strength of the ship’s armour was largely unknown as it consisted of a range of composite alloys, the like of which the computers hadn’t identified before.

  While she was scrolling through all this information, it also became clear that the alien ship was rapidly closing the distance between itself and the orbital, moving at something akin to eighteen g while their little flotilla ambled along at a little over four g. Previously, she had suspected that Meyer had been deliberately holding back, waiting for the enemy to make its first move before reacting and now she was certain of it.

  Meyer, with Farnese’s tacit support, was ready to sit back and watch this whole station be destroyed, along with The Galaxian and everyone on board, rather than commit himself to any direct action. It was like watching the farmer’s dog standing in the yard while the fox ran amok in the hen house.

  The only good news was that with the enemy missiles approaching at sub-maximal speeds they had a little more time to come up with a solution. Another ten minutes, perhaps?

  If they were lucky.

  “Lots of activity around the docking facility,” one of the officers reported.

  “Has The Galaxian managed to cast off yet?” Farnese said.

  “Not yet, they’re currently powering up their fusion drive but the docking clamps are still in place.”

  “Looks like the port authority are sticking to their word.”

  On the main screen they watched from a sideways on angle as the main ship borne umbilicals were blown, severing The Galaxian’s connections to the station proper, yet still the clamps remained in place.

  “Sir, other vessels are currently on the move.”

  “How can that be,” Farnese was moving forward now, taking command in lieu of any response from Meyer. “I thought they were all on lock-down.”

  “It’s one of the deep space freighters,” the officer reported. “I’ve got it down as the Praader-Lorenz. It’s been loading up on ore for the last few days but it’s not due to leave for another twelve hours.”

  “And where are they headed? Back to Blackthorn?”

  “That’s just the thing, sir, they’re clear of the station but they’re hardly moving at all.”

  The screen switched to show the Praader-Lorenz in all its glory. Design wise, it had less in common with a traditional ship and was little more than a long line of bulk transport carriages all strung along a solid central axis.

  Farnese said, “If they’re intending to make a run for it, they’re doing a damn poor job. Let’s look at The Galaxian, again.”

  The million tonne starship hadn’t moved an inch, built to carry passengers between two separate solar systems it was completely self-sufficient in all respects. It possessed no large extravehicular craft for people to make their escape on, no lifeboats or tugs. The thinking was that if the ship did become crippled in some way then the passengers would be able to shelter in any of the ship’s autonomous sections. They’d just have to hunker down and wait for help to arrive – but it was this which was working against them now. Until the station saw fit to remove the restraining clamps, they were helpless.

  “Heay, what was that?” Someone shouted.

  Ardent had seen it too. She’d been staring at the cruiser when something had flashed in the corner of her eye but it was too brief to really register.

  Then it happened a second time. Then a third. But these things weren’t coming from one specific area, they appeared to be clustered around The Galaxian’s port side.

  “What is that?” Farnese asked as the picture zoomed in.

  Ardent found that she couldn’t speak, some part of her brain refused to register the truth of what was happening.

  The magnification increased until no one could be in any doubt of what it was that they were looking at: hundreds of passengers who’d been caught out when Selig had sealed the main doors. Rather than return to the station they’d huddled together inside the decompression chamber. They’d no doubt been hoping that they’d found shelter there, that Selig wouldn’t give the order for full decompression while they were still inside.

  It was a gamble with which they’d paid for with their lives.

  “What was Selig thinking?” Farnese said.

  “He was thinking about saving his ship,” she said bitterly. “His ship and all the people on board. What was he supposed to do? When everyone else fails you- the politicians, the public administrators, the military - you realise that you’re essentially on your own. And that’s when you have to start making those tough decisions.”

  This last comment she directed straight at Meyer, not that he appeared to be listening. He stood, frozen to his lectern, looking as if he’d aged twenty years.

  Because of the screen’s increased level of magnification, it was impossible to miss the moment that the restraining bolts holding The Galaxian in place were blown: jets of explosive gas instantly cooling as the bolts themselves were sent spinning off into space.

  “Looks like the port authority finally saw sense,” someone said.

  “Then why not just release the clamps normally? Why go to the extreme of blowing the bolts?”

  “Takes too long. By blowing the bolts they’re not wasting any time.”

  “Somebody down on Laxx Central must have grown a conscience.”

  “A little late for that now.”

  It was impossible to see the incoming missile swarm but they knew it had to be getting close when what remained of the stations defence lasers started firing automatically.

  Someone switched cameras until they got a view of the station’s outer rim with the Praader-Lorenz freighter some way off in the distance. She had to be three kilometres long, at least, but from this distance she looked relatively inconspicuous.

  Something sparkled against the black void and Ardent struggled to see what it was. The thing began to grow brighter and then went out like a dying ember. One of the missiles had been destroyed. But it was only one among many.

  The threat was much closer than anyone had realised. She wondered briefly whether the captain of the Praader-Lorenz fully realised what he was doing, bringing his load across like that, at such an inopportune time.

  He was in danger of blind siding the station’s remaining defences while putting himself and his crew in serious danger.

  When the first of the missiles hit the orbital it was simply too fast to see and so it was only when they saw the subsequent explosion spewing fire out into space that they understood what had just transpired. There were five missiles in all, all of them precisely targeted, each one sending a deep shudder through the station’s fabric. These followed some several seconds later by a series of sympathetic explosions which lit up the whole side of the station in ways which were both captivating and terrifying in equal measure.

  Just when that onslaught had abated and Ardent thought that they’d seen the worst of it, the four particle beam turrets, silent until now, started up, their bright beams of field-accelerated ions pulsing out in search of their oncoming targets.

  The particle beams were a hellish weapon and represented the station’s last line of defence. They were rarely used partly because of the vast strain they placed on the station’s energy grid, diverting power from every corner of the facility.

  The beams hit home with surprising accuracy, the sustained ferocity of their attack overriding any defensive capabilities they might have carried. Unable to deal with the accompanying heat build-up, their navigation computers started to go into melt down. Two of the six missiles simply veered off from their allotted target exploding into bright, glowing fragments.

  But, in the end, the energy drain caused by the onslaught proved unsustainable and the canons started to dim, the crew of the Renheim watching as each particle beam spluttered and died.

  Any sense of celebration was smothered before it could begin as the four remaining missiles struck home. Their launch pattern had been so well co-ordinated that they impacted at precisely the same moment, sending a bow wave of destruction outwards from the point of entry. It rippled along the station’s skin, gorging on the oxygen rich atmosphere before venting its exploding gases out into space . Safety factors built in to protect the orbital should have kicked in at this point redistributing some of the energy throughout the station but it was only a matter of time before the station’s systems became completely overloaded.

  The bridge crew on the Renheim could only watch as a fireball tore through the orbital’s main compartments. On the heat read-out the colours turned through green to yellow. Thousands died as the orbital’s passengers were vaporised in an instant.

  Still the station continued to turn, victim of its own latent centrifugal force, threatening to bring the only intact section of the station around into the path of the two missiles which were yet to arrive.

  But before this could happen, the captain of the Praader-Lorenz goosed his forward thrusters, causing his unwieldy freighter to lurch forward, a mere thirty kilometres ahead of the orbital itself. Whether he truly intended what happened next Ardent couldn’t determine. Either way, the result was the same: the two incoming missiles became confused, unable, as they boosted towards their target, to be able to distinguish between the haulier and the actual station.

  The two missiles struck the ore carrier at virtually the same moment, causing a cataclysmic explosion which sent gobbets of molten metal scything out through space. Some of it even made it as far as The Galaxian, peppering its aft sections.

  But if the captain’s intention had been to save the people on the space station, in that regard at least, he failed miserably. The damage had already been done, the integrity of the orbital had been so completely compromised that under the pressures of its own centrifugal force it was already in the process of tearing itself apart. As its various supporting struts broke apart under the strain, the whole structure began to slowly pinwheel out of control.

  The crew of the Renheim were forced to watch while the bodies of six thousand men, women and children - who had failed in their attempt to gain a berth on The Galaxian – were spilled out into space. The lucky ones were those who were already dead. For the rest it must have been a terrifying ordeal as they fought for breath just as the fluid in their lungs was beginning to boil.

  This was one of those rare cases when having access to a thin suit only helped prolong the suffering of the wearer. With only enough oxygen for twenty minutes of life support, the suits were never intended for prolonged exposure to vacuum and with Meyer’s flotilla taking another two hours to arrive, it was a foregone conclusion that if they did mount a rescue mission it would be confined to recovering the bodies of the dead.

  They could see them now, tumbling end over end, their bodies broken and torn. Victims of the rapid decompression which had flushed them out of their compartments in less than a second.

  Ardent could hardly believe it. What had once been a Confederation space dock, harboring countless ships was now a mass of twisted metal and shattered debris.

  In fact, the only thing remaining was The Galaxian. Though she was showing obvious signs of damage to her aft section, she had been spared the worst of it by the timely intervention of the Praader-Lorenz, of which now there was little sign beyond an expanding cloud of vapor.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Webster waited until the engines’ whine had died down before unclipping himself from his seat. He wasn’t comfortable traveling in the Da’al shuttle. It was an experience only slightly less terrifying than flying the thing himself.

  Everything about the shuttle seemed off to him, not least the smell. The strong briny sea smell permeated everything and persisted in spite of the Marines’ best efforts to eradicate it. The thing’s centre of gravity seemed poorly aligned with the demands of flying in atmosphere. All the while she was in the air there was a sense that she was unbalanced, with her nose constantly tipping forward as if destined to crash face first into the ground. And the seats. He didn’t even want to think about how uncomfortable they were, pitched forward rather than back, forcing you into a semi- squatting position. Even when he stood up, his thighs were still burning.

  This sense of disquiet was not helped any by the fact that no one knew what was powering the thing. They’d spent a lot of time examining the cockpit read-outs and the only thing which they could find a function for was a tiny little indicator on the right-hand side. It resembled one of the old petrol gauges you sometimes saw in those old vintage cars.

  After they’d taken the shuttle out a couple of times, they noticed that the indicator was gradually dropping so they stopped flying it for a while. But then, after two days, the line was hovering close to the top again. This was after they’d experienced some of the clearest daytime skies since they’d arrived at Colditz. Simple logic pointed to the fact that it had to be solar powered.

  That was just a guess, of course - they had no real proof - but still, no one was happy flying it when the skies were particularly overcast. He kept expecting it to fall out of the sky at some point but, until that day came, he reckoned they’d just have to keep taking their chances. As transport options went, it remained the only game in town.

  A couple of Kekkonen’s scientists had been on the flight with him and he waited until they’d left before picking up his own bag and ambling out towards the exit ramp. There was a lot of low cloud over head and the wind had dropped but at least it wasn’t snowing.