But before she could get around to that, the medical supplies had arrived. Morton had a nurse working with her and it was their job to check the medicines against the manifest. As always, there were items missing. She had left the nurse to sort it out while she had gone on her rounds.

  Morton hadn’t expected to be acting as a general practitioner at this stage in her career, but there was nothing else for it. It wasn’t that the Yakutians didn’t have some excellent doctors working for them - they did. The problem was that beneath this top level of practitioner, the standard of healthcare dropped off alarmingly. She’d have been surprised for instance if any of the nurses she’d encountered so far had volunteered for their job. They acted as though they were being punished for something. And, whenever she had occasion to make use of their services, they acted as though she were wasting their valuable time. That was the main reason she preferred checking on the health of her fellow crew members herself.

  There was one young spacer who she was particularly concerned about. She suspected that he had a serious chest infection, which he was trying to hide from her, terrified that he would be taken off to the Yakutian medical facility. The rumour was that anyone who went in there would come out loaded full of implants. It wasn’t true of course – implants were hugely expensive – but it didn’t stop the rumours from spreading. If she did have to send him there she knew that he’d resist as best he could. But if he didn’t show any signs of improvement today, she was going to have to do something. That was the reason she’d determined to leave him until last on today’s rounds.

  Things weren’t helped by the fact that she was having trouble concentrating. Ever since last night, she’d been haunted by what it was that she and Hermendal had seen. If what they’d seen was real, there were so many implications that it was frightening.

  The whole episode had all the elements of a particularly disturbing nightmare: finding a secret area buried within the bowels of the ship, the bone numbing cold, the partially hidden artefact.

  But, most disturbing of all, was what she had seen written on the artefact’s underside.

  She was already beginning to question what it was that they’d actually seen. She’d avoided discussing it with Hermandal on the journey home. He’d suspected something, of course. All the way back to the intersection he’d been asking her what it was that had rattled her so badly.

  But she had determined not to discuss it, fearing that to give voice to her suspicions would only make matters worse.

  So, she said nothing.

  She was halfway through her rounds when she became aware of a disturbance in the camp. Normally, she would have been the first to determine what exactly was going on but not this morning. She was in the process of checking on a woman with a particularly nasty skin infection when she heard her name being called. She’d seen a number of such infections in the past week and was concerned that they might somehow be related.

  She looked up to see four of the ship’s blue suited Scarpa troops bundling towards her. She hadn’t had any dealings with the Scarpa before and just the sight of their uniforms had her heart racing.

  The Scarpa were responsible for keeping order on-board ship, a sort of combination of MP and Marine, they had a fearsome reputation amongst the Yakutian crew.

  When they came to stand over her, Morton realised that there were five of them, not four. They were accompanied by a slim young officer sporting an array of disfiguring facial implants.

  “Doctor Morton?” he said, his voice sounding vaguely automated. “Doctor Elsbeth Morton?”

  The woman that Morton had been examining was already struggling back into her uniform.

  Morton stood up, her heart hammering in her chest.

  “Yes. What’s all this about?”

  “I am not at liberty to discuss that at the moment. Please, Dr Morton, will you come with us.”

  *

  She was taken to a part of the ship that she’d not visited before. From what she already knew, she guessed that they were somewhere on the third deck. The elevators had read-outs just the same as those on the Mantis but her grasp of Yakutian numbers wasn’t that good. She was going to have to brush up on that if they were here for much longer.

  They were in some kind of science facility with partitioned rooms made up of lots of glass panels. As they passed through the various departments, she started to realise that each area was colour coded. They had started off in the yellow section before moving into the purple section. Everywhere they went, people hurried to move out of their way, the blue Scarpa uniforms having an instant and obvious effect. Eventually they arrived in an area where the glass sections were opaque. It was a subtle difference but it filled Morton with a real sense of disquiet.

  She was led by the young officer into a small waiting room. Two of the Scarpa came in behind them while the other two remained outside. There were two desks opposite each other and a selection of metal stools. She chose to sit down while the others remained standing. It looked like they were in for a long wait.

  After the initial rush of adrenaline had subsided, Morton’s lack of sleep began to take its toll and she found it took a conscious effort just to keep her eyes open. It must have been some thirty minutes later when she heard the guards outside coming to attention.

  Clearly an officer of rank, she decided. A mere scientist wouldn’t warrant that kind of attention. Had Mahbarat finally decided to put in an appearance?

  The officer, looking sheepish, slipped out into the hallway where a brief conversation took place.

  Morton was relieved when Sunderam walked in.

  He didn’t say anything, simply walked through and approached the far wall. Morton thought his behaviour to be very odd indeed but then the whole wall dilated open. She couldn’t hide her amazement but Sunderam didn’t seem to notice, indicating for her to follow him as he stepped through.

  Neither of the two guards moved a muscle.

  The lighting in the next room was purposefully dim making everything inside look jaundiced. The research lab, for that’s what this surely was, was much more open than the previous rooms. A space where colleagues could interact in a lively atmosphere of discussion and debate. There were numerous workstations scattered about which would easily accommodate twenty scientists but they were deserted now.

  Looked like the senior scientists only worked office hours. Interesting.

  Sunderam moved into the centre of the room and then turned to study her.

  “I trust that you found what you were looking for, doctor.”

  “I’m – I’m sorry?”

  “Last night. Did you find what you were looking for?” There was no menace in his words, he was speaking in a flat monotone and yet suddenly she was very frightened indeed. “It’s a simple enough question.”

  She wanted to say something. Tell him that she didn’t know what he was talking about, but she was also aware that it would be futile to deny it. Sunderam would get to the truth eventually. She had nothing to gain by playing dumb.

  “I wanted to know what it was that you were keeping from us,” she said, like a child who’d been reprimanded by a teacher. “I thought that there might be other prisoners.”

  “From the Mantis?”

  “Yes. I didn’t believe you when you told us that you only had capacity for forty-five pods. I still don’t.”

  “In some respects, you’re right. Let me show you.”

  Sunderam moved stiffly for such a big man and had a tendency to bump into things. He was just too big to move around efficiently. He took her down to the far end of the lab and out onto a mezzanine balcony. From there they looked down on a hive of activity. There must have been forty scientists and technicians moving about down there. But it wasn’t these that caught her attention.

  Suspended in the middle of the room was the same section of fuselage they’d examined the previous evening. Only now it was completely uncovered, held in place by a ring of what looked like powerful magnets.

  But this time it seemed more benign than the last time she’d seen it, less threatening. Part of the reason for that, she supposed, was that the scientists were slowly disassembling it – pulling it apart piece by piece. The various component parts painstakingly laid out on vast sections of tarpaulin. She’d seen a similar process conducted by various space crash investigators. As a young recruit, she’d had a recurring nightmare about crashing her ship on some remote planet. She was always the sole survivor and she wondered how she might survive.

  When she woke from those dreams she did so experiencing a combination of fear and excitement. That was how she felt now.

  While they appeared to be destroying something precious, at the same time their actions were helping to find a solution to a puzzle she’d previously only been aware of on the edge of her understanding. Perhaps, if she thought about it more closely, she might even be able to come up with a solution herself.

  Sunderam began moving away from her then, towards the far end of the balcony and the thought was gone. Morton found herself following him despite herself. She had countless questions and only Sunderam appeared to have access to some of the answers. But she was also wary of him. The very fact that he knew that she’d been out of her holding area meant that she had broken their unspoken agreement. He would tolerate her and her people so long as she didn’t interfere with what it was he needed to do. There would be a price to pay for her deception. She only hoped that she could meet it.

  Sunderam didn’t strike her as the sort of man who did things on an impulse. He would have had a very definite reason for bringing her down here. She just hoped that he wasn’t intending to tell her everything only to have her killed subsequently. That’s what a psychopath might do to help justify what he was planning to do.

  Was Sunderam a psychopath? He certainly seemed cunning enough.

  He’d been very careful about not showing himself at the Confederation camp. If Morton were to disappear, there would be nothing to link her to him. If anything, they would presume that the Scarpa had murdered her.

  She was starting to develop a newfound respect for him. He’d certainly thought things through, which was more than could be said for her.

  He was standing on the far end of the balcony consulting a series of four smartscreens while, down on the floor a technician was removing a section of the craft using a laser. A thin skein of smoke rose up as he worked.

  Despite her suspicions, she felt that she had little option but to go over and join him.

  Initially, she was unsure exactly what it was that he was looking at. Slowly, realisation came. She was looking at a series of model based 3-D images. Gemstone spectral imagining of a very high order. Four bodies, analysed in pin sharp cross-section seemed to float in mid-air. Sunderam was able to manipulate the image reconstruction from any angle he liked.

  From the warmth of the colour palate it appeared that the subjects were alive, though marginally so. The outer layers of their bodies were resolutely blue. Also, they were arranged in a variety of odd positions. Normally, to get image resolution like that the patients had to be totally incapacitated, which usually meant they’d be lying down but these figures appeared to be sitting upright as though suspended in amber.

  Sunderam looked at her, as if to judge her reaction. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Who are we looking at?”

  “You honestly don’t know? I find that hard to believe.”

  Morton went and stood closer to the screens, marvelling at the details. Certainly, the Confederation had no analytical equipment anywhere close to what she was seeing here. The level of detail was incredible. She could track arteries as they became veins before branching out into tiny capillaries. This type of technology would revolutionise the Confederation’s medical facilities.

  It was like being given a glimpse of the future. Without thinking, she reached out and tapped one of the screens. The image began to slowly revolve. Unlike the others, the bones here were brown and discoloured, showing signs of multiple fractures.

  “That’s him, isn’t it?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Compare this bone density with that of the others. These other three are still in their prime. Look at that femur it’s been completely shattered and then re-aligned. Badly by the look of it. I’ve only seen one set of scans like that outside of a veteran’s hospital.”

  “Captain Faulkner?”

  Morton couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “You knew, I take it?”

  “Suspected. It’s always best to get confirmation from the patient’s private physician.”

  Morton shook herself. She had to fend off the melancholy that had settled on her while she’d marvelled at him. Had to reassess the situation.

  “You’re absolutely sure?” Sunderam probed.

  “I’ve examined him often enough. That’s him. That’s Faulkner.”

  No questions about how those fractures had been acquired. They were both aware of Faulkner’s military record: twenty years in a Yakutian jail. A death sentence for most.

  And now, here he was transformed into a trophy for his old enemy. The fact that there were still signs of life didn’t fill her with much optimism. The ship had made some attempt to keep them alive but often as not such attempts were unsuccessful. She’d seen it all: those seemingly healthy individuals who were irredeemably brain dead, the long since mummified corpses, the perfectly preserved skeletons whose escape pods had malfunctioned.

  After a while, her job stripped away all hope.

  “How did you even find this?” she asked.

  “One of our communications officers alerted us to it. It seems the bridge of the Mantis was fitted with its own transponder.”

  Morton nodded.

  “Obviously, we then had the job of tracking it down. A mere quarter of a million miles, but somehow we managed it.”

  “So this section of the bridge was jettisoned just prior to the Mantis impacting with Blackthorn?”

  “Yes, we believe that it was designed with that purpose in mind. We’re still unsure how they were frozen, however.”

  “Flash freezing,” Morton said. “It’s only been used a few times, to my knowledge. Brutal really. Lacks any of the subtleties of a cryogenic freeze.”

  “Well, let’s see what we can do for them, then.”

  That explained why the room was so cold. Unlike the escape pods which could pretty much resuscitate people autonomously, the flash freezing process was very much hit and miss. The chances of a subject being successfully brought round were less than fifty percent. And that assumed that their health hadn’t been compromised by the process itself. A high proportion of those who did survive it went on to develop heart and lung complaints.

  Morton realised that Sunderam was speaking to her.

  “It would be a great help if you could also identify the others.”

  Morton massaged her temple. Her headache had been building since first light and was now starting to assert itself.

  Why did he want to know their identities? Should she even tell them?

  After an initial panic, she decided that there was no sense in refusing. As prisoners of war, they were obliged to identify themselves to their captors anyway. It would have been an easy enough thing to do if she’d had access to their medical records but without them it would very much be a guessing game.

  And where to start?

  “I’m pretty sure that this is Lieutenant Commander Bertran. He had his spine re-modelled as a child. The surgeons did an excellent job, otherwise he’d never had made it into the Academy. Still, you can see some of the titanium struts here and here. I reviewed his notes when he joined the ship but I never examined him personally. Still, he’s the right age. Height and weight match up as well. I couldn’t swear to it but I’m pretty sure that’s him.”

  “And the others?”

  “That’s a little trickier. I’m cheating here, of course. Making assumptions but I know Colin Yamada, head of comms, would have been there at the end. Looking at his bone structure and his general musculature I’d say that this is possibly him. I seem to remember that he was a rower in his youth and his lung capacity would certainly tally with that. That left only one other person unaccounted for. You have to understand all this is just an educated guess.”

  Sunderam nodded. “I understand. And this gentleman?”

  “No, you’ve got me there,” Morton had quickly got the hang of the system and was running through the images at speed. “There were any number of junior officers on duty during that last day. There would have to have been a very good reason for this man to have stayed behind but I can’t for the life of me think who this might be. He’s a rather thickset individual, late twenties. There’s a number of old fractures: right fibula and a number of digits, mostly on the right hand. Suggests he was involved in some kind of contact sports: football, say, or martial arts. But, other than that, I’ve got nothing.”

  Sunderam looked at her as though he’d just been served a deeply disappointing meal.

  “Thank you, Doctor Morton, that must have been difficult for you.”

  Morton thought about that for a second. “No, not really. It all feels so unreal. What are you planning to do with them? I mean how do you propose to store them once you get them out?”

  “Store them?” Sunderam scowled, indicating the array of scientists and technicians milling about. “We have no intention of storing them.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you intend doing with them, then?”

  “We aim to thaw them out. Captain Mahbarat is very keen to meet with your Captain Faulkner.”

  Morton couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But what facilities do you have on-board? At the very least, you’re going to need a fully staffed cryogenic lab.”

  “Why would we need all that, doctor, when we have you?”

  “You’re not serious. You want me to do it? I wouldn’t know where to begin.”