“Major Mackie, this is Captain Faulkner, I hope you can hear me.”

  They watched in silence, hoping that someone would answer but no one did. The screens slowly filling with all manner of alien horrors.

  Suddenly, there was a close-up of Mackie’s face.

  “Mackie here, sir.”

  “I regret to inform you, Major, that Team Zeta has been unable to hold back the hostiles.”

  “Oh,” Mackie’s head dropped as the enormity of the situation hit him. “That’s very … unfortunate, sir.”

  Faulkner was having difficulty speaking, he held his fist tight against his chest. “I’m afraid that your position is no longer sustainable, Major. At most, you have five, maybe ten minutes. Hopefully, you’ll have enough time to transfer all your findings over to us.”

  Mackie stared resolutely back at him. “We’re transmitting right now.”

  Faulkner turned to the head of Technical Support who nodded gravely.

  “Then, in that sense, your mission has been a great success, major. I’d like to thank both you and your men for your efforts here today.”

  With that, Faulkner stood and saluted the screen.

  “Thank you, sir,” Mackie returned the salute. In the background, erratic fighting had broken out. “My squad is activating the ‘arrow’ as we speak. We’ve set it for ten minutes in the hope of giving the other troopers time to get clear.”

  Ten minutes until detonation, Webster mused, that would be cutting it fine.

  “I’ll ensure that the order to withdraw is passed on. I wish you every luck, major.”

  “Don’t worry about us, sir. If we can’t hold them off for that long, we don’t deserve to call ourselves Marines.”

  *

  By the time LaCruz came to her senses, she was suspended by her feet from the ceiling. She was inside a small, dimly lit room about the size of a traditional washroom. There were various boxes arrayed along the back wall, similar in design to the ones she’d seen earlier.

  But she was not alone.

  There were at least two of the aliens in there with her.

  One of them was scuffling about behind her, but she resisted the urge to turn and look. She didn’t want to alert them to the fact that she was now awake. The other was down a short corridor and seemed pre-occupied with whatever was in the end room.

  She needed time to think.

  She was dressed only in her unitard, her suit having already been removed. She thought she could see sections of it lying out in the corridor. The knife she kept in a leg sheath was gone but it felt as though the small pistol she had taped to her lower back before suiting up, was still in place. She couldn’t be sure without checking and she couldn’t do that without drawing attention to herself.

  Plus, she really needed to know what was going on with that second alien.

  Her biggest concern though was the gunshot wound in her side, which felt like it was going to split open at any moment. Even if she managed to shoot both aliens, she doubted she would have the strength to free herself afterwards. Her feet were stuck in a lattice work of solid black tar and she had no idea how she might extricate herself. Things weren’t looking good.

  She felt the first suggestion of panic begin to tug at the back of her mind and decided she needed a clear plan.

  The worst plan in the world is better than no plan at all - as her Basic Training instructor had been keen to impress on her.

  Only now, she was having problems coming up with even the ‘worst plan in the world.’

  She must have lost consciousness after she’d been shot and the pain in her side now was making it difficult to think clearly. There were probably some ribs broken but those could be fixed. She estimated that no more than several minutes had passed since she’d been shot which meant that the aliens would likely have broken through to where Mackie’s men were hiding out. There was no way her squad could have held them back. There were just too many of them.

  The mission had failed, which meant that she had to assume that the tactical nuke had already been activated. It had been mentioned at the end of the briefing and, right now, she was wishing she’d paid a little more attention.

  The sound of voices behind her made her stop for a moment and question herself.

  Part of her mobile suit’s response to the gunshot would have been to pump her body full of meds. That might keep her alive short term but one of the downsides of powerful medication was a tendency to hallucinate.

  Could she be hearing things?

  The fact that the voices seemed real didn’t stop her from thinking it.

  Then, a stocky individual wearing jeans and a kaftan strode in. His face was lost in shadow but she could hear him clearly enough – he spoke fluently in a series of clicks and whistles. When she tried to bring her head up so she could get a better look at his face, the pain in her side was enough to dissuade her, so she took to scrutinising his sandals instead.

  The man was accompanied by the alien from down the corridor and the pair of them seemed lost in conversation. This creature was brown, not red, and all she could really make out was the way the sections of his thorax were so cleverly articulated. That, and the fact that he was wearing some kind of leather harness.

  Definitely hallucinating, LaCruz told herself.

  The man laughed, then came over. Pulling up the front of his kaftan he knelt down beside her.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I was about to ask you the same question. Allow me to introduce myself: I am Gregor Hermandal.”

  “Where’d you come from?” LaCruz squinted up at him. “You part of the boarding party?”

  He seemed to find some humour in this.

  “No, I was already here,” he spread his hands apart. “This has been my home for the past few years now.”

  She was starting to feel confused. She noticed he had several strings of beads hanging round his neck. That had to have some significance.

  “Where’d you get those things?”

  He fingered the beads absently.

  “This is how they like to reward me. If I manage to please them. You see, I’m not so different from you. At one point, I found myself in precisely the same position you find yourself in now.”

  “So, you’re what? Like a prisoner?”

  “Exactly. That’s exactly what I am.”

  “I’m confused,” LaCruz indicated his outfit. “Where’d you get all this. All these clothes?”

  “They asked me what I wanted to wear. They can fabricate most things although it took a while to get some of these textures right.”

  The legs of the alien who accompanied him began to drum against on the floor and then it let out a series of harsh clacking sounds.

  “My master’s voice,” he said apologetically. “He’s eager to get going. They want to know how many more of you there are.”

  For a moment, crazily, LaCruz considered telling him but then common sense kicked in. She was being interrogated, she realised. It was quite a pleasant interrogation, but still…

  “LaCruz Jackson. Corporal. 75348210.”

  “Oh come now, how tiresome,” he suddenly thrust his hand around her back, hooking it inside her unitard. He quickly found the pistol started trying to pull it loose.

  LaCruz tried to stop him but the fight wasn’t in her. She’d lost too much blood.

  With a wrench, Hermandal pulled the pistol free. Then he handed it to the alien. The creature took it in one massive claw, though still managed to handle it delicately.

  “That’ll buy us some time,” he said. “But you’re going to have to give me a lot more if we’re to have any chance of keeping you.”

  “Keeping me!”

  “Trust me: it’s more preferable than the alternative. I managed to convince them not to kill you because you were – you know - special.”

  He gestured towards her chest.

  “What? Because I’m a woman?”

  “That’s right. Now don’t be offended, help me out here. How many are there in your party?”

  “Why should I tell you that?”

  “Survival. Look, your teammates are as good as dead - they’re never getting off this ship alive. So tell me – how many?”

  The alien had started chittering, waving the gun about.

  “He wants to know how it works.”

  “What, so he can shoot me with it. No thanks.”

  “I really think you should tell him.”

  LaCruz was about to say something when the quiet of the room was shattered by a gunshot and something solid hit the ground behind her. The alien with the gun whirled around but then lurched to one side as a second gunshot echoed around the room. A rain of viscera spattered over LaCruz’s legs as the creature listed and fell, its head a pulpy ruin.

  Even though she was hanging upside down, LaCruz had no problem recognising her rescuer.

  “Grimes? That you?”

  He didn’t answer, just aimed his rifle at Hermandal’s chest. His suit was in tatters and he’d discarded his helmet somewhere along the way.

  “Who’s this?” Grimes looked grey in the half light. He’d taken a shot in the arm and there was blood dripping from his fingertips.

  “Some guy. Don’t shoot him, though. He speaks the language. Might be useful.”

  Grimes used the barrel of his gun to lift the edge of Hermandal’s kaftan. Gave him the once over.

  “I like your dress.”

  LaCruz interrupted. “We haven’t got time for this. You need to get me down.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “The mission’s totally FUBAR, Grimes. We have to assume the worst. Which means we have to assume they’ve already activated the nuke.”

  “No way.”

  “Think about it,” she said. “This is Mackie we’re dealing with here.”

  Grimes dropped down to get a better look at her. This seemed to decide him.

  “Yeah. Mackie, right. That guy’s old school.” He pursed his lips. “You’re right. We should get going.”

  “I’ll help,” Hermandal said and, before anyone could stop him, he’d grabbed hold of a solid chunk of the substance encasing her feet.

  “Brace yourself,” he said and pulled.

  LaCruz landed on her shoulder but it was the pain in her side that took her breath away. It felt like she’d been shot a second time.

  Once she’d gathered herself, she saw that the braided tar around her feet had gone hard and white. When she twisted her foot and pulled, it simply broke away in pieces.

  Once freed, she scurried over to reclaim her pistol which was sticky with the alien’s blood.

  Hermandal helped her to her feet and the three of them staggered from the room. He led them through a series of tight corridors until she found herself back in the chamber they’d been defending. It had been turned into a charnel house with heaps of alien dead strewn all over the place.

  Here and there, she could pick out the distinctive lines of a mobile infantry suit but she didn’t go to investigate.

  Her friends had fought hard and died harder.

  “Anybody else make it,” she said, though she already knew the answer.

  “If they did, I ain’t seen ‘em,” Grimes was struggling to get his breath. “They hit us with some kind of high ex stuff. I was standing behind Thomas at the time. I guess he took the worst of it.”

  “What about your suit?”

  Grimes looked down at what was left of it. The right arm was missing and the torso was full of holes.

  “I think I might have lost my deposit on this one.”

  “You okay?” she asked. “You don’t sound too good.”

  The last time she’d heard such laboured breathing the guy’d had a collapsed lung.

  “Little breathless is all. So, where to next?”

  “I’m open to ideas. We can’t use the exfil point though. Not without our suits.”

  “What about the cargo bay where Alpha came in?”

  LaCruz shook her head. “They’ll have that place pretty much locked down by now. We’re going to have to find somewhere else, and fast.”

  “Without our HUDs? That’s a big ask.”

  Grimes was right of course. If they’d been on a Yakutian ship things might have been different. They’d have had a chance of tracking down some emergency thin suits, but not here.

  She turned to Hermandal. “What about escape pods? They must have some somewhere.”

  The translator laughed, “You have a lot to learn about the Da’al.”

  “The what?”

  “The Anjharan Da’al, to give them their full name. The Da’al don’t believe in escape pods. They think it breeds weakness. They expect their crews to perish in battle along with their ships.”

  “Looks like they’re going to get their wish,” Grimes deadpanned.

  “There must be something!” LaCruz insisted. “Some way of getting off this thing!”

  “I fear not. They have their own attack craft, of course, but those sections of the ship would impossible to access. And besides, their flight controls would be unlike anything you’re likely to have encountered.”

  Grimes hefted his weapon in his good hand. “Well, it might be worth a shot if we’re all going to die anyway.”

  Hermandal pulled a face. “About that: I wondered if you might consider letting me go, and probably the sooner the better. I wouldn’t want the Da’al to get the wrong idea,”

  LaCruz grabbed him by the arm and shook him. “Didn’t you hear us back there: our people just planted a nuke in your engine room. We’ve got perhaps ten minutes, at best.”

  “Well, dear lady, why didn’t you say so before?” and he started off along the walkway, his beads swinging as he went.

  Grimes levelled his gun at his back and shouted, “And where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’ve just had an idea. There might be a way of this thing after all.”

  *

  “What’s this?”

  Hermandal bent forward, his hands resting on his hips, panting after his exertions.

  “It’s the way they move around the ship.”

  Grimes and LaCruz stared up at the pale blue, viscous tube which ran off into the distance. It reminded her of a Water Park ride.

  “It’s the quickest way up to the Siepp. What you’d call the captain’s cabin. Of course, there isn’t really a captain and it isn’t really a cabin.” He registered their confusion and pressed on. “It occupies the top deck.”

  “The whole top deck?” Grimes asked. “That’s crazy.”

  “It pays to be paranoid if you’re the Siepp.”

  “We’re wasting time,” LaCruz said. “Let’s do this.”

  The tube was accessed via a small hatchway set into the supporting column. As LaCruz started to open the hatch, Hermandal laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “I feel I should warn you. They use salt water to propel you through the system and it rarely takes the most direct route.”

  LaCruz pulled the hatch open and fed both legs through. “But it’ll get us up there, right?”

  Hermandal started to explain something but then decided against it. “Yes. It’ll get you up there. Whether you’re still alive when you get there is another matter.”

  It was cramped with all three of them inside the tiny chamber but they managed it. LaCruz arched her eyebrows prompting Hermandal to start entering the command instructions.

  *

  LaCruz could hardly breathe.

  Although the tube wasn’t completely filled with water there was enough of it sloshing around to make it near impossible to inhale without taking in at least some water. She had tried holding her breath but had eventually given up and was now gasping for air.

  She didn’t know in which direction she was headed and after a while she didn’t care. She just wanted her ordeal to end. At certain points, she became completely submerged only to pop up later in a small pocket of air. Even then she couldn’t relax as powerful jets propelled her on her way.

  If Hermandal had wanted to get rid of the pair of them, then she couldn’t think of a better way of doing it. There was simply no way of resisting the force of the water - you learnt that very quickly. You had to surrender yourself to what was happening and just hope for the best.

  At one point, she could have sworn that she saw Grimes take a sharp turn just up ahead of her, but it was hard to be certain. The discomfort of the water sluicing through her sinuses was enough to distract anyone. She was eventually diverted out of the main system when a barrier swung down, diverting her off into a side pool. The water was ice cold and took real effort to haul herself onto the side. As she lay there exhausted, her fingers explored her lower back, searching for her pistol – but it had gone. It was only when she stood up that she felt it drop down inside the leg of her unitard.

  She had started to shiver violently by the time Hermandal arrived, the water dripping from his beard. He slid down a narrow slide, sitting bolt upright whilst pulling his long hair back off his face. As he approached the icy plunge pool, he quickly swung his legs over the side, and stepped down gingerly.

  When Grimes finally appeared, her worst fears were realised: he was sliding along, face first, showing no signs of life. LaCruz needed Hermandal’s help to grab him before he made it to the pool. Grimes was a big man and she didn’t think the pair of them would have the strength to haul him out of there.

  Grimes was in a bad way. The remains of his suit had been ripped away by the force of the water, leaving little more than his collar. The worst part was that he didn’t seem to recognise either of them.

  “Grimes! Grimes! Look at me. Grimes!”

  Suddenly, his body convulsed and he vomited. They helped roll him over and he was sick twice more before he could raise his head again.

  “Jesus, that nearly killed me. I didn’t join the Marines to end up drowning.”