He threw out his hands in disbelief.

  “What a fiasco! And what about your man, over there. Any chance he might be implicated in any of this?”

  The warden looked over to the corridor. The team was in the process of trying to re-start his heart.

  “It’s possible, I suppose, but I can’t see how. He was stationed outside, on suicide watch, as per your instructions.”

  “But he would have had access to the cell, surely?”

  “Of course, but the door was still locked when we got here. Plus, there were no signs of a struggle. He was just lying there.”

  “Well, that’s all very strange.”

  “But perhaps not the strangest thing.”

  The warden went over to the other side of the bed. Curious, Faulkner followed him.

  “The noose.”

  The warden squatted over it. It lay carefully coiled on the floor, the noose arranged to one side.

  “That’s not a modern fibre,” the warden said. “That’s a traditional hangman’s rope. The sort they used in Victorian prisons. It even has that smell.”

  Faulkner leaned forward and sniffed. “Sort of an oily smell. Who cut him down?”

  “The response team. It’s standard practice with any hanging. You have to assume there’s a chance they could be resuscitated. They did absolutely the right thing.”

  Faulkner nodded. He was right of course, but in doing so they would have destroyed vital evidence.

  “Any chance that Farnese might have smuggled this in himself?” Faulkner asked.

  The warden’s lips twisted. “All our prisoners are under constant surveillance. I honestly can’t see how.”

  “What about the other prisoners? Might one of them been responsible?”

  “We do have Captain Meyer down here, if that’s what you mean, sir.”

  Faulkner looked up at the ceiling. Several ceiling tiles had had to be removed to get access to the joist from which the rope had been suspended.

  “I find it difficult to believe that any one man would be capable of doing this single-handed, though this isn’t my area of expertise. Anyway, in the meantime, I want you to put an armed guard on Captain Meyer’s cell.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “And I want Farnese’s body identity checked. DNA, the whole lot. I want to be absolutely certain that this is who we think it is.”

  Faulkner went back out into the corridor having to step over a member of the medical team in order to get past.

  He could see Ardent standing at the end of the corridor. She’d been crying but looked fiercely beautiful in her grief. The two guards were doing their best to stop her from entering.

  “I need to see,” she said.

  “And you will,” he went over and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Just let them finish with him first.”

  “But I need to say goodbye.”

  Suddenly, she was in his arms.

  While he held her, he watched as Schwartz nodded in acknowledgement before gently edging away. It was more difficult for the two guards who were still obliged to stand their ground. They turned their heads slightly, pretending not to hear.

  “I tried to see him, you know,” she was speaking into his shoulder. “Twice. But they wouldn’t let me in.”

  “That was my fault, Sigrid, I’m sorry. I couldn’t risk him having any visitors.”

  He could feel the heat of her face against his neck.

  “Did you suspect? That something like this might happen? Did you?”

  “I’m sorry,” he glanced at one of the guards. “I can’t talk about any of that, I’m afraid.”

  “I wanted to ask him how he felt. Whether he had any real feelings about me, or whether it was all just part of some act. It’s stupid, I know. But I wanted to hear it from him. I think I deserved that, at least. And now, I guess, I’ll never know.”

  “That’s supposing that even he knew the answer. He was being pulled in so many different directions by the end, I doubt he’d be able to tell you one way or the other. There was just too much going on.”

  “He surely didn’t want this, though. Dying in a prison cell. Not this.”

  Faulkner took a deep breath.

  “Sometimes, we don’t get to choose.”

  *

  Webster lowered himself the last few metres just to confirm what he already knew.

  Nash was dead, of that there could be no doubt. If the fall hadn’t killed him he would have died instantly when he impaled himself on the satellite aerial sticking up from the bottom of the shaft. Two metres of the central mast were sticking out through his back. If Webster had been on his own, he’d have had no chance of retrieving the suit.

  But having Dalbiri with him had lifted his spirits and a plan was soon hatched. Leaving Webster in the lowest doorway, the one which gave access to the command centre, Dalbiri had climbed down and attached the end of the cable to the back of Nash’s pressure suit – there was even a D-ring on the suit for just such an operation.

  Then it was a matter of Webster taking the strain while Dalbiri got underneath the body and heaved. Together, they managed to slide it clear of the mast in what was an impressive display of upper body strength on Dalbiri’s part. Webster was left in no doubt that, if their roles had been reversed, he wouldn’t have been able to manage it.

  Then, rather than have Webster climb down again, Dalbiri had stripped the suit from the body.

  Once that was out the way, Dalbiri threw the suit over his shoulder before beginning his ascent.

  Dalbiri wasn’t a natural climber and made hard work of it, pulling with his arms rather than utilising the strength in his legs but eventually he made it.

  Unlike Webster, Dalbiri had always intended on traveling out with the ghost ship and had even conspired to bring a thin suit along with him. Once they’d climbed down into the command suite, he started putting it on. Webster stood there holding Nash’s suit, not sure how best to continue. The hole in the front of the suit was surprisingly compact but caked in blood and he wasted time wiping the blood away.

  The more pressing problem was the long diagonal tear across the back, most of which had been done when Dalbiri had been lifting the body off the spike, so that couldn’t be helped. With a proper repair kit, Webster was confident that it could be repaired, the only problem being that they had nothing to repair it with. Until they found something, there was no point him putting it on.

  What they needed was a roll of tape. A big roll. But they were fast running out of time.

  Once Dalbiri had his thin suit on, the pair of them set about finding something they could improvise a repair with.

  There was a lot to discuss but neither of them spoke, too frightened that if they did they’d betray the deep anxieties they were both struggling to contain.

  The floor was a chaos of discarded furniture, equipment, water bottles, lights and whatever else a team of xenobiologists might find useful. Apart from the water, the only thing they found which Webster thought they might actually find a use for were the oxygen tanks liberally scattered around. It was difficult to search through all this detritus as they were having to stand on top of it as they worked. Dalbiri found this to be the most challenging aspect as he kept losing his footing and twice fell over.

  They had been searching for several minutes when Dalbiri stopped.

  “Heay, you hear that?”

  Webster carried on, didn’t even look up. “What? Does Nash want his suit back?”

  “No, I’m serious. Look at the room. It’s different.”

  Webster raised his head. “Can’t it wait?”

  But Dalbiri was right.

  The dimensions of the room had subtly changed, with sections of the bulkhead now extending far into the room proper. Plus, the lights were so much brighter now. It was difficult to judge objectively but it was definitely happening.

  “What about this?” Dalbiri pointed to the wall in front of them.

  A massive screen had appeared showing a view of deep space. The picture started to zoom in on a fuzzy, irregularly shaped object. Vaguely familiar. Blue with grey highlights and shaped like a fishing hook. As the image began to grow in size it became clear that this was the Heimdall, though neither of them had seen it from this angle before. Dalbiri pointed to the screen. Faint trails of light were currently streaking away from it.

  Four of them.

  “Are they firing on us?” Dalbiri wanted to know.

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Time to get into that suit of yours?”

  “Too late for that now,” Webster looked around. “We need to get ourselves tied down.”

  Dalbiri pulled up a section of webbing which was attached to the floor .

  “Probably as good as we’re gonna get.”

  Webster found a section which was already half-filled with MRE boxes and squeezed in alongside them.

  Dalbiri at first couldn’t find anywhere to accommodate him and had to empty out a section full of water containers. Even then, when he squeezed under the webbing, it didn’t accommodate him completely and he had to tuck his knees up to his chest.

  Webster unclipped the helmet from his belt and put it on. It was a tight fit but he reckoned he might need it when everything in the room started flying about. With nothing to occupy his thoughts, he started counting backwards from one hundred. The way he looked at it, by the time he reached zero, whatever was going to happen would already have happened.

  He’d got to forty-three when there was an enormous bang and the whole ship lurched to one side.

  Webster felt the sharp tug of gravity and gasped as he was thrown forward, the webbing slicing into the flesh of his hands.

  There was the sound of an explosion from somewhere deep inside the ship and then everything went quiet.

  A direct hit?

  The lights dimmed, came back on again before dimming immediately.

  The bottom suddenly dropped out of his stomach as they started to pivot over to one side and the whole ship groaned as its contents started to shift.

  A metal cylinder hit him in the shoulder before bouncing away. He gripped the webbing tightly as they seemed to hang in the air, the sensation of pitching forward impossible to ignore.

  “Shit! This is it!” Dalbiri said as the floor became the ceiling.

  An amber light by the doorway started flashing and this was followed several seconds later by the sound of engines firing.

  But that can’t be, Webster told himself. Surely, that isn’t possible.

  The evidence though was pretty compelling.

  They weren’t falling, they were in fact climbing at a rate of about three gees.

  He looked across at Dalbiri who could only widen his eyes in bafflement.

  Then another sound started up, different again to the sound of the engines. Low and sonorous, it seemed to vibrate through every molecule of the ship. Even the air in front of their faces seemed to shimmer.

  “What the hell is going on?” Webster asked.

  “That’s the weapons cluster firing up,” Dalbiri said with absolute conviction.

  “But that’s crazy. Who’s doing all this?”

  “I don’t know. Does there need to be a someo ne ?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Noah had been able to look down on the action from his superior vantage point.

  He felt cut-off from everything that was happening, so calm in fact that he was a little embarrassed about his earlier anxieties. Everything would be fine, he thought. If his father had been there that would have been his take on it as well.

  His attempts to draw the Heimdall’s fire had been clumsy and amateurish. He couldn’t believe how badly he’d misjudged the whole situation. Elina had been right earlier: he’d been lucky not to get himself killed.

  It had been incredible to watch as the missiles had closed in on the Montezuma. He’d never expected a space battle to look so beautiful but, with the planet’s surface acting as an epic backdrop, there was no other way of describing it. The effect had only been enhanced as a result of the deployment of Montezuma’s countermeasures. Four interceptor missiles had streaked out to defend the ship from the incoming ordnance. Noah knew how expensive they were but there was no denying that they did the job, exploding directly in front of the incoming missiles and thereby engulfing them in their own coruscating clouds. As the first rays of the sun caught them, the clouds shimmered with all the colours of the rainbow.

  Noah’s heart sank though when two of the missiles emerged from these shrouds to continue on towards their target. The only thing standing between them and their goal were the ship’s point defence lasers. Unlike their military equivalents, the Montezuma’s lasers were manually operated. Normally, in such a situation, the lasers would have found themselves to be completely outclassed but somehow they managed to nail one of the missiles two hundred kilometres out.

  They weren’t nearly so lucky with the remaining missile which flashed towards its target unopposed. It caught the Montezuma on the port side, the explosive decompression it caused sending a column of debris flooding out into space. But, despite all this, the ship continued to rise, showing no obvious signs of impairment.

  The fourth missile was another story. It was flying erratically and Noah had to follow its path by piggybacking onto the Montezuma’s external cameras. At no point did it appear to be entirely under control even when it veered off and struck the ghost ship. The force generated by such an impact should have been enough to split the ship clean in half, but surprisingly that didn’t happen. Instead, as soon as it was hit, a flash of electric blue light bathed the ship’s entire hull, bright enough that his screen had to autocorrect to stop from dazzling him.

  After that faded, the ghost ship emerged again looking virtually untouched, which was nonsensical but true. The only thing which might indicate that it had been hit at all was the fact that some of the cables securing its aft section had been seared away by the heat of the explosion.

  Then a second pulse rippled across the ghost ship’s hull, although this one was nowhere near as bright. This had the effect of severing most of the cables securing the ship and Noah watched as one by one, they slowly peeled away.

  This shouldn’t be happening , was Noah’s first thought. That ship should have been destroyed.

  And yet her trim and general orientation suggested that she was operating at full capacity.

  But where was she getting all her power from?

  Had they been double crossed? Had this been a set up all along?

  All these questions occurred to him and yet he didn’t have the first idea of how he might go about answering them.

  All he knew was that this wasn’t how things were supposed to go.

  The ghost ship took its time as it maneuvered its way clear of its restraints and there was something wonderfully restrained about the sinuous way it handled itself.

  This came in marked contrast to what he was picking up about her on his control panel. According to his readings she was experiencing a massive energy spike. He’d only ever seen something like it when a Kalvarian pirate captain, finding himself cornered and facing an indeterminate prison term, had chosen to destroy his ship along with everyone on board.

  “Oh my God, I think they’re going to self-destruct!”

  Noah activated his own defensive array, while mentally trying to figure out what impact such a detonation might have on Tomas’s ship. The Montezuma was big, no question, but it could only absorb so much. He was desperate to open a channel to them but the power surge seemed to be affecting the comms as well.

  He was bracing himself for the impact when something completely unexpected happened.

  A concentrated beam of light cut out from the ghost ship’s stern, so bright that it seemed to illuminate the entire ionosphere.

  Its target was the Heimdall which found itself suddenly transformed from aggressor to hapless victim as a relentless outpouring of pure energy threatened to overwhelm her.

  The outburst was as malignant as it was unrelenting, initially seeming to swamp the Heimdall’s shields.

  But the Da’al ship wasn’t out of tricks yet. The crew, no doubt blinded by the severity of the onslaught, managed to cut their speed and thereby seize the initiative long enough for them to angle their prow away from the energy beam. Once this had been achieved, they were able to accelerate away again on a completely different vector.

  But the beam tracked across with them and, as the onslaught continued, the Heimdall writhed like a beetle on a pin.

  For a short while, the Heimdall’s shields held, absorbing some of the energy while trying to distribute the rest throughout the whole ship. But in the end, that energy had to go somewhere, and it wasn’t long before, one by one, the shields started to fail.

  Noah was watching all this in infrared because it was the only way of coping with the blinding glare. Areas of the ship glowed red then gold then white as they started to go into meltdown. It was a difficult thing to watch and Noah could only think of the terror of the crew as they tried to comprehend the full horror of what had befallen them.

  A succession of ever fiercer explosions marked the Heimdall’s final demise and it was several minutes before the images on the screen began to cool: from orange to acidic yellow and finally to pure green.

  Total defeat in space was as silent as it was lonely and when he finally sat back from the screen, Noah found that his hands were shaking.

  *

  Webster helped Dalbiri up off the floor. Neither one of them said anything but they were both thinking the same thing.

  Technically, they shouldn’t have survived the last quarter of an hour but somehow they were still here. Once they’d seen the Heimdall destroyed, the screen had gone off. Next, the door had sealed itself and the lights had gone off.

  Floating about in the dark he and Dalbiri had used the webbing to drag themselves about in the hope of finding an oxygen tank. Webster still had some air left in his helmet and Dalbiri’s suit should have enough to sustain him for some time but then they’d need to find another oxygen source, and quickly.