“Warning! Warning! Warning!”

  The cloud was starting to billow out until it all but cloaked the ceiling.

  “What on earth is that?” Faulkner asked.

  The lights went out and they were bathed in a harsh red glow.

  Helm Operator Rolf turned in his seat. “If that’s a rupture in the coolant system, I’m guessing that’s hydrogen gas, sir.”

  A voice boomed in their ears.

  It was Davitz. “Captain Faulkner, I’d just like to say that despite our differences, it’s been my pleasure and honor to have served under you. Also, I’d appreciate it if my service record did not mention what it is that I’m about to do. If you could also pass on my regards to my father, I would appreciate it.”

  Faulkner was having difficulty breathing but managed to shout across to Yamada, “Where is Davitz now? I mean, exactly.”

  “He’s on the battle bridge, sir.”

  The battle bridge was situated on D deck. It contained simplified versions of all the ship’s main operating systems. It allowed the ship to be piloted, albeit at a greatly reduced capacity, even if the main bridge had been destroyed.

  “But the battle bridge isn’t operational. Never has been.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but according to this, the battle bridge is fully operational. In fact, according to this…”

  *

  LaCruz had to force herself to concentrate on the job at hand but that was difficult to do with the Mantis bearing down on them.

  She’d never expected to see her own ship from this particular angle, and, if she wasn’t careful, it was likely to be the last thing she’d ever did see.

  It was impossible to ignore the sheer beauty of the Mantis as it swept in against a backdrop of glittering stars. The angle of the sun caught her hull in such a way that it was difficult not to be awed by her sheer presence.

  Certainly, LaCruz didn’t want to think about that other object. The one looming over her left shoulder. Wouldn’t let herself even look at it. Thing that size, she reasoned, would strike you down dumb if you allowed yourself to dwell on it.

  No, better to stay focused. Get the job done and then get back to the ship.

  “Grimes! What do you want me to do now?”

  The cable she was working on - which had looked so slender from a distance - was much thicker than she’d imagined. Currently, she was attaching explosives to it using insulating tape. Within the confines of the pressure suit, she lacked the ability to look down and had to keep lifting the tape up to her face so that she could see what she was doing.

  She was having difficulty locating the end of the tape. If she lost that there was no way she’d be able to find it again and her usefulness on this particular mission would be at an end.

  She’d imagined that cutting the tape might be the hardest part but the trooper who’d helped her on with her suit had helpfully attached a scalpel to the back of her left glove. So far, it had worked perfectly. As long as she remembered not to stab herself with it, then everything would be fine.

  She did another quick check on Grimes’ vital signs via her HUD. Green indicators everywhere. Things were going well. They had three more minutes to finish what needed to be done and then they would be out of there. It didn’t matter whether they were finished or not. That was why she’d agreed to the mission – to keep Grimes safe – and that was what she intended to do.

  “Grimes!” she growled. “I’ve got one more pack of explosives. Where do you want ‘em?

  He pointed to a transparent section about four meters away.

  He hadn’t said anything since they’d left the Dardelion. Although they’d rigged him up with the usual comms-link he was avoiding talking in a bid to conserve oxygen. LaCruz had no such concerns.

  “Over here?” she indicated. “You want me to put it in the middle?”

  Grimes gave her the thumbs up. That was good.

  He could still understand her.

  Once the carbon dioxide inside his suit reached dangerous levels he’d find even a simple gesture like that impossible to execute.

  LaCruz covered the four-meter jump across to the new section with a minimum of fuss, relying on the magnets in the suit’s knees to provide her with purchase. She quickly unhitched the pack of explosives from around her waist and securely slapped it into place. She held it with one hand while applying tape with the other. Then, with a well-practiced flick of her wrist, the scalpel sliced the tape in two.

  It was only as she was smoothing the tape down that she realized something was wrong.

  She was slowly floating away from the surface in front of her and couldn’t work out why. It took her a second to realize what it was she’d done. The section she’d been working on was constructed from a polymer, not metal, thereby rendering her magnets effectively useless. And, as she’d been pressing the tape down she’d also, inadvertently, been pushing herself away.

  Not a problem, she told herself. Stay calm. You’ve still got a job to do.

  She lightly brushed. the sensors on her forearm plate and felt a reassuring tilt in her orientation as her thrusters activated. She was pitched forward - a little more quickly than she’d have liked – and had to scrabble against the polymer fascia in order to right herself.

  By grabbing hold of one of the sides, she was able to pull herself hand-over-hand until she was back where she’d started. She secured herself by hooking one of her legs around part of the super structure. From there, she got to work cutting off lengths of tape.

  Three more strips later and she was able to admire her handiwork.

  “Okay, Grimes, I’m done.”

  Only Grimes wasn’t there. And when she twisted around, she still couldn’t find him.

  The explosives he’d been working on were securely fixed in place but, of the man himself, there was absolutely no sign.

  As she whirled around, desperate to locate him, she became aware of the sound of her breathing becoming more and more ragged.

  Where the hell was he?

  She’d seen him less than a minute ago. He couldn’t have just disappeared, could he?

  With an effort, she forced herself to calm. She very deliberately took the roll of adhesive she’d been using and tucked it inside her pocket. Then she sealed the pocket.

  Don’t panic, she told herself. You’re in vacuum. The rules are different out here.

  Grabbing hold of one of the broken cables, she slowly eased her head back. From where she was she got a very good view of the underside of the space station.

  Lots of things up there to catch her eye but Grimes wasn’t one of them.

  She took a deep breath and began slowly pulling herself forward, her eyes scanning methodically from left to right.

  Over to her left was the planet Iscaria – very impressive. Lots of greens and browns and purples.

  Couldn’t miss that.

  But she chose to follow the line of the elevator instead, looking for clues as to where he might have got to.

  Still, nothing.

  Then suddenly, there he was, some thirty meters away, over to her right, caught up in a vast sea of what looked like copper wire. He seemed to have snagged his suit on something and was struggling to extricate himself.

  Not good.

  Just watching him trying to free himself was distressing.

  Unlike her pressure suit, Grimes’ thin suit wasn’t built to withstand any kind of real punishment and, if he kept on struggling like that, it was only a matter of time before he compromised his suit.

  “Okay, Grimes, I see you,” she said, quickly inverting herself so that her head was pointing towards the planet. “Coming to get you now. Stay still. One problem’s bad enough, we don’t need another.”

  Her HUD informed her exactly how far away she was from the planet’s surface. She quickly deducted thirty meters in her head and then entered a countdown via her forearm plate. Her thrusters were on their lowest setting so when she launched, she went with that.

  As a result, the sense of freefall was oddly soothing. It felt as though she was hardly moving at all, only the distance counter giving her any indication of her forward motion. It was reassuring to have the shaft itself to guide her and every few meters she’d brush her fingers against it. When she’d covered twenty-seven meters she tapped the forearm plate again, craning her neck in the hope of seeing Grimes. Only she’d miscalculated.

  She hadn’t allowed for the necessary stopping distance and found herself surrounded by a sea of copper wire, much of which caught at her suit and scraped against her visor.

  “Jesus,” she clutched at various wires in a wild effort to stop herself getting caught up further.

  At first, the copper strands slid through her fingers and it was only with a sudden rush of panic that she was able to grab a bunch of them and stop herself.

  In the top right of her visor, her heart rate symbol was in the red while the edges of her face plate were starting to mist up. Technically, that wasn’t supposed to happen but it had happened regularly enough throughout her training that she refused to let it upset her now. So long as she could see, she’d be alright.

  She just needed to slow her breathing that was all.

  It took her a moment to locate Grimes again. He was five meters away, over to her left and it appeared as if he’d finally stopped struggling.

  Only, when she looked harder, she saw that he didn’t appear to be moving at all, his body swaying slightly from side to side.

  “Grimes. Grimes! Try to stay awake, I’m coming for you.”

  Conscious of overshooting again, she braced her feet against one of the few remaining cables, took aim and pushed off.

  She started rising immediately and, as she crossed the distance, she had to grab Grimes’ trailing arm in order to stop herself sailing right past. She half expected him to grab her then and pull her down, but he didn’t.

  He just hung there, his arms and legs splayed out like a giant spider.

  “Okay, okay,” she said, pulling herself down over his body. “Dardelion - if you’re hearing me - we need immediate evac. I say again, immediate evac, over.”

  She had a good view of Grimes’ legs now and instantly saw what the problem was. Where he’d been trying to extricate himself, the copper wires had pierced his suit in several places, ensnaring his lower body. On the positive side, there was no sign of any blood.

  His suit would have been venting air all this time, which would explain his current state.

  “Dardelion, I repeat …”

  “Dardelion here, Flight One,” a male voice she didn’t recognize. “What’s your situation, over?”

  “Charges are set but we need immediate evac. Team leader is down, repeat, team leader is down.”

  “Er, roger that. We’ll be with you as soon as we can, Flight One. We’ve got a few problems of our own.”

  And then the link was broken.

  Dammit.

  LaCruz spun herself around in the hope of locating the shuttle but she soon gave up. They could be anywhere out there. Her priority now was to get the pair of them clear so she could blow the charges. The detonator itself still dangled from Grimes’ belt.

  They couldn’t afford to wait. She’d just have to hope that the Dardelion could vector in on her signal. If not, then there was precious little she could do about it.

  Once the decision had been made, LaCruz moved swiftly. There was no point trying to preserve the integrity of Grimes’ suit, it had already been breached far too many times for that to be a concern.

  She was just going to have to improvise.

  Inverted as she was, she clamped her knees around Grimes’ chest. Then, working quickly, she used the scalpel to lop away the various copper wires which had snagged him. There were a lot of them and it soon became obvious how wrong she’d been about the damage that had been done to his leg. The wires had bitten into his flesh at multiple sites - it was only the fact that the blood had frozen which had made it look harmless.

  It was difficult extricating Grimes’ legs without a point of leverage but somehow she managed it. When she’d finished, her body was bathed in sweat and the condensation on the inside of her face plate had reduced her visibility to less than twenty five percent. But at least they were free of the wires, and that was all she could hope for with the clock ticking.

  LaCruz looked around, hoping to find something she could use to bind their bodies together but there was nothing suitable. Even Grimes’ tool belt was too short. Instead, she was forced simply to cling onto him as she feathered her thrusters in an attempt to get them way from there.

  As soon as they were clear, she was able to orient herself by the glow from Iscaria before fully utilizing the power of her thrusters.

  They shot forward and almost immediately began spinning about their central axis. But that was the least of her concerns. She was too busy watching the light of ten million stars as they gently rotated around her.

  For a long time, all she could do was stare, unaware of what she was doing or why she was doing it. They were lost out in this huge void, the pair of them, and LaCruz wondered, not for the first time, if Grimes knew the real reason why they had never slept together.

  As a Marine, she’d enjoyed lots of sex with lots of men and even a few women, but she’d been extremely demure where Grimes had been concerned. She’d been careful not to send him the wrong kind of signals. She didn’t want him to see her as just another one of his sexual conquests.

  She liked him far too much for that.

  Grimes might have plans about life beyond the Corps but then, so did she.

  The unfortunate thing was that she couldn’t bring herself to tell him how majorly he featured in those plans. Plans, which would come to nothing if either one of them failed to come through this.

  “Try not to die,” she’d told him just before they’d exited the shuttle.

  It was still good advice. She just hoped they could both stick to it.

  Her own suit was starting its own countdown now it seemed. In the middle of her visor a clock had started ticking backwards. According to the read-out, she had less than six minutes of breathable air left.

  Oh well, she thought. Six minutes.

  She adjusted her grip on Grimes’ body, eager not to be parted from him but as she did so her hand caught against something else.

  The detonator.

  And suddenly, she remembered why they’d gone out there in the first place.

  It was difficult arming the detonator wearing gloves but somehow she managed it. There was no satisfying click when she pressed it either, such were the vagaries of working in vacuum, so she had to content herself with the bright flash which came from behind them.

  Nothing else for it now. That was it. Now they’d just have to wait and see.

  *

  Webster made one last attempt to get through to the Mantis before turning to Silva. She held up a hand, her eyes fixed on her controls.

  “Not now, Alex. I’m sort of busy.”

  They had lost track of Grimes and Jackson somehow and it had taken her valuable minutes trying to relocate them.

  “We need to stop Faulkner,” Webster said, his heart starting to race. “Before he makes a terrible mistake.”

  “Not much we can do about it now,” Silva said flatly.

  Webster cursed, knowing she was right. Faulkner had already committed himself to his course of action. He’d done so the moment he’d given the order to evacuate the Mantis and there was nothing Webster could do to change that.

  Faulkner had glimpsed one slim chance of turning this whole thing around and committed himself to it wholeheartedly. It showed a level of resolve which Webster sadly lacked.

  What if he was wrong?

  Yet, if someone didn’t act they’d be consigning thousands of people to an untimely death.

  And if he did pull it off? What then? With Faulkner dead and the Mantis destroyed, where would that leave Webster and the rest of the crew? Trapped in a hostile system, without a vessel, millions of miles from home.

  Best not to dwell on that now, of course. Best to focus on the positives.

  Besides, they’d done all they could.

  Markham had dealt with the drone. In the end, it had taken three pinions to secure it but, once the drone was under-tow its systems simply shut down. Some kind of hard-wired safety mechanism, he supposed. And, since it no longer posed a threat, they were still towing it now.

  Markham proposed that once everything else had been resolved they simply dragged it out into deep space and leave it there.

  That suited Webster, especially now that the umbilical had been severed. He could look down and see what was left of the elevator through one of the side windows. They’d all expected it to collapse immediately after Grimes’ explosion but that hadn’t happened. It had remained largely upright, looking like the stalk of a flower that had been deadheaded. It was moving away from them now, carried along by the rotation of the planet.

  Ironically, the mission would have been considered a real success if they hadn’t lost Jackson and Grimes in the process. It was particularly upsetting after the pair of them had come to Webster’s aid at the hospital.

  Grimes’ timings for this operation had always been overly optimistic but Webster had gone along with them anyway. He was as much to blame for this as anyone.

  Grimes must have known what he was up against but he’d gone about it regardless. What was it that the Marines called it?

  Warrior Spirit.

  Well both he and Jackson possessed that, and in spades.

  Silva had been joined by Adiche, who was now manning the comms station continuing to sweep the area looking for any sign of where they might be. They were simply following procedure but the sheer futility of it was starting to anger Webster. It was hopeless. He knew that and they knew it, which was probably why their constant checking and cross checking infuriated him so much.

  There was nothing to be done.

  In the end, he could stand it no longer and left the flight deck to go looking for Sergeant Markham. He just needed a distraction.

  In the confusion of the main cabin, he failed to see him straight as everyone was gathered around one of the big screens. One of the troopers must have somehow established an uplink with one of Blackthorn’s surveillance satellites.