Accordingly, when a ship came under attack, one of the safest places to be was in the sickbay. She’d heard of lots of cases where unconscious patients had survived for more than a day in such circumstances.

  What she was less certain about was whether an auto-doc was likely to be quite so robust. There had been stories of people surviving in them since before the Long War but she wasn’t sure how accurate they were, particularly when the machinery had clearly seen better days.

  It would be a hell of a risk.

  That’s what she was thinking when the maintenance man lunged at her.

  Morton didn’t even think, her response was entirely automatic.

  The stun stick barely touched him, but the charge was enough to hurl him back across the room.

  He hit the main bulkhead where he struck his head before pitching forward. Morton managed to catch him before easing him gently to the floor.

  In the silence that followed, she became aware of the sound of thunderous footsteps coming from behind her. As she turned, she could see a series of monitors mounted on the inner wall from which you could see everyone who was approaching. She got a good look at the three security guards barrelling along the corridor towards her, though she had no indication how long she would have before they actually arrived. She quickly discarded the stun stick, went over to the main door she’d come through, shut it and sealed it. There wasn’t enough time for her to do much else before a ferocious hammering was heard on the other side of the door.

  Without thinking, she returned to the little maintenance man and checked that he was still breathing. When she found that he was she quickly turned him to a more comfortable position. By this time, the three men outside had stopped hammering and switched to simply shouting threats instead and, even though she couldn’t understand a word, she felt her heart tripping in her chest.

  “Alright,” she said. “That’s decided it.”

  She went and stood over the auto-doc, the lines on Faulkner’s face were so deeply ingrained that she felt that she was looking at a man in his seventies. This whole process had taken a terrible toll on him physically and she found herself wondering whether, even now, she was doing the right thing or not.

  Reluctantly, she planted a kiss on the clear perspex canopy, wondering whether this might be the last time she’d ever see him. But that thought was quickly forgotten as she remembered something she’d nearly over-looked in her haste.

  Squatting down, she did a manual search of the underside of the auto-doc. It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for: a button for activating the homing beacon.

  When she’d pressed it, she experienced an overwhelming sense of joy when a bright red light, mounted on the rear, started to flash.

  Perhaps this is going to work after all, she thought.

  Getting the legs off the auto-doc and then transferring it into the airlock was difficult but not impossible and so somehow she managed it. Behind her, she could hear the sound of blaster fire impacting on the outer door. They were either very desperate, very foolish or both.

  Closing and securing the air-lock door proved a lot more difficult though, and it took her a while to work out why. The thing had hardly ever been used and the hinges hadn’t been properly maintained. It was ridiculous really: this was one set of hinges you’d think would be routinely checked, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Still, with a bit of brute force, she finally managed to secure it.

  She checked the seal as best she could before working the handle until it was completely closed. After allowing herself one last look through the portal, she triggered the release mechanism for the outer door.

  A warning klaxon filled the small interior while a harsh amber light bathed the walls.

  The next time she looked through the portal, she found herself looking out towards a vast parade of stars, and Faulkner was gone.

  Morton pressed her hand to her mouth as she slowly backed herself towards the nearest bulkhead.

  What had she done?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  As much as LaCruz had wanted to evacuate the area, she was constrained by the fact that they had to think about Barnes. His suit had taken a number of major hits and although he was badly injured his suit was in the process of ministering to his wounds.

  The three of them were still alive and that was the main thing, something she wouldn’t have taken odds on an hour ago.

  The saving grace in all this was that they hadn’t had to carry Barnes. It had been Walker who pointed out that the suits came with an anti-grav component. Keeping him flat, they’d secured a tether to Barnes’ suit and it had been fairly straightforward towing him along after that. The only problem came when they had to negotiate any kind of steep incline at which point it felt like they were pulling a broken-down truck.

  They made camp that night ten kilometres south of their last encounter with the pair of them taking it in turns to keep watch while also keeping a check on Barnes’ condition. Each suit came equipped with its own medical kit but they didn’t want to have to use that unless they had to and the suit would let them know soon enough if things were becoming critical. So far though, Barnes condition hadn’t worsened. It wasn’t ideal but it was the best they could hope for in the short term.

  Sleeping in the suits was easier than LaCruz had expected and she managed to get a decent four hours in the end. In the morning they sat around watching the sunrise while they checked out the MRE rations on offer.

  LaCruz had plumped for Blueberry Muffin flavour.

  “What’s it like?” Walker wanted to know.

  “Not bad,” she sucked on the tube. “I wouldn’t describe it as blueberry flavour but it definitely tastes of something. A little too sweet, if I’m honest.”

  “Too sweet for you!” Walker howled. “But you love all that sugary shit. I better give that thing a miss. I don’t want no diabetes.”

  LaCruz wasn’t offended. She revelled in her reputation as a sweet tooth specialist.

  “What about you? What did you go for, in the end?”

  “Tried the oatmeal but it’s not for me. This is…” he consulted his screen. “Caramel Shortbread Milkshake.”

  “That one of those protein shakes? You trying to bulk up or something?”

  “’S’right. Just cause I’m out here doesn’t mean I should let my diet slip.”

  She looked at the desolation surrounding them. “Yeah, well good luck with that.”

  “What’s wrong, LaCruz? Don’t think we’re gonna make it?”

  “I’ve been in worse spots.”

  “Yeah, sure you have.”

  Neither of them were under any illusions about the severity of the situation they found themselves in.

  “We’ll be fine,” she assured him. “That shuttle must have come down somewhere. Once we establish radio contact with them we’ll be good to go.”

  “And if we can’t get through to them: what then?”

  “These suits are good for the next three months. We’ll think of something.”

  Her eyes flickered over towards where Barnes was lying. Without proper medical attention he was unlikely to last three days.

  “You’re full of shit, LaCruz.”

  LaCruz started moving off, heading back towards camp.

  “Where you off to now?”

  “I want to go take a look at that enemy shuttle.”

  “Weren’t you the one said it might be booby trapped.”

  “What do you care? Stay here. You’ve got all the protein shakes you can eat.”

  “I’m not staying behind to change Barnes’ diapers,” he said, lurching to his feet. “I’m coming with you.”

  They never made it all the way back to the shuttle. They were still some way short of the camp’s perimeter when Walker spotted something.

  “Over there. Roughly north northeast.”

  But as soon as LaCruz switched to her optics – without anything concrete to focus on – the magnification started going crazy and she had to look away again.

  “Okay,” Walker said. “Try looking at that mountain peak, over there. Got that? Now up and to the left.”

  “What is it?” she asked. On her first sweep she went past it but on her second attempt, her optics did what they should have done the first time. “Ah, shit, not another one.”

  “Not just one,” Walker prompted. “Over a little to your left.”

  Two shuttles were now in-bound. They bore the same markings as the one they’d encountered the previous day.

  “Not good,” LaCruz said. “We better get out of here while we still have the chance.”

  She started moving back the way they’d come.

  “You think they know what happened?” Walker said.

  “I think they’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  “So, what’s our play going to be?”

  LaCruz almost laughed. There was a lot of talk of ‘plays’ when training in suits but that supposed that you had a squad at your disposal. For a Marine that meant a minimum of thirteen: a squad leader with three fire teams of four troopers each. They were a long way from those kinds of numbers but she couldn’t let that cloud her judgement.

  “First thing we have to do is find somewhere to stash Barnes. He wouldn’t thank us for dragging him all over, plus he’s going to slow us down on those hills.”

  Walker didn’t comment, making it clear what he thought of the idea.

  “Don’t worry,” she said airily. “We can come back for him later.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “We make ourselves scarce. We had the element of surprise last time and struggled when there were three of us. If that last shuttle was anything to go by, we’re looking at maybe fourteen hostiles.”

  “You’re not filling me with confidence over here, L.J.”

  Nobody had called her that in a while and she thought she knew why he was using it now. Walker was scared. He was going to need careful handling if they were going to get through the next twenty-four hours in one piece.

  “We need to try and make some use of the terrain. Try and draw them up into those hills.”

  “Really?”

  “Look to split them up. Maybe pick off a few stragglers.”

  Walker thought about that for a moment.

  “Okay,” he said. And then again, this time with more conviction. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Track trace,” Lieutenant Parkes said.

  From a state of inert watch awareness, everyone in the Renheim’s comms team had suddenly come fully alert.

  “Beginning to track now, sir.”

  Ardent had little idea what they were talking about but she knew real excitement when she saw it. They’d spent the last week chasing down possible pod sightings and now here was something new. Here was something different.

  Even Farnese seemed to sense it. He came over and stood behind Saviano the officer charged with tracking the new sighting. Her face a study in concentration.

  “I didn’t know that there were any pods in this area,” he said.

  “There aren’t,” Parkes said. “This is something different.”

  “Yet it’s displaying an emergency beacon? Is there some other ship in distress that I don’t know about?”

  He raised his eyebrows in Ardent’s direction.

  “Not to my knowledge, sir. Unless you count the Serrayu.”

  They had been tailing the Serrayu for a day and half now. It was Standard Operating Practice in such situations.

  They watched as Saviano bent to her task, scanning for anything that might be hidden in the wall of noise that made up deep space.

  “But we’re not scanning the Serrayu, are we?” Farnese said.

  Captain Meyer, ever sensitive to the perceived threat posed by active scanning had insisted that only passive scans be implemented where the Yakutian vessel was concerned.

  “No sir, we’re not. We’re just following our noses on this one.”

  Parkes turned to another one of his officers. “Any idea what it is we’re looking at?”

  The man he was talking to held up one hand while he scrolled through thousands of potential targets with the other.

  “Just a moment, sir. Nearly got it. Yep, here it is.”

  He lurched back in his chair as a great raft of images popped up on his display. “I haven’t seen one of these in years.”

  “What is it?” Parkes had been on duty for ten hours and was starting to get cranky. “Speak up.”

  “It’s an auto-doc. A heritage model, according to this. This thing dates back to before the Long War. Developed by our side so I can’t think what the Yakutians are doing with it.”

  “Dumping it, by the look of it,” Farnese said though no one laughed.

  “Bizarre thing to do though, sir, don’t you think?” Parkes said. “What with everyone so wound up and all.”

  “Absolutely no chance this could be hostile?” Farnese mused. “A weapon of some kind?”

  “Are the Yakutians really that conniving?” Ardent said. “Send out a bomb with a homing beacon on it. Wait until we get it on-board before they detonate.”

  Ardent could tell by the comms crew’s reaction that she’d made some kind of professional faux pas. Perhaps she shouldn’t have called it a ‘bomb.’

  It was Parkes who came to her rescue.

  “I think there’s very little chance of that, ma’am,” he said. “This thing has no propulsion system so you can’t aim it. What’s the point of having a ‘bomb’ that you can’t deliver to the enemy?”

  He’d purposefully used the word himself in an attempt to hide her blushes.

  Saviano tipped her head to one side, revealing a large mole on her jawline.

  “The question is: what do we do with it?”

  Farnese braced his hands behind his head in an effort to suppress a yawn.

  “We don’t do anything. We leave it. It’s the Serrayu’s problem after all.”

  Saviano looked over towards Parkes. “Is that wise though, sir? Just ignore it? Sometimes, these kinds of things turn up trumps.”

  “She does have a point,” Parkes said. “And it has activated a distress beacon so, under maritime law, we are honour bound to investigate.”

  But Farnese was too tired to care. He started moving back towards the command chair.

  “Let’s leave it for a while – see if the Serrayu want to do something with it.”

  “Sir,” another member of the comms team said. “Sorry to interrupt but we’ve just received a fresh communication.”

  “From the Serrayu?”

  “No, sir. It’s from another Confederation ship. The Naked Spur.”

  *

  Meyer had been dining alone in his cabin when the message came through and so they all had to stand around waiting until he finally emerged. This gave Ardent enough time to get the low-down from Farnese on this new arrival.

  The Naked Spur had last been seen patrolling the Hermia Gate. This was traditionally a vulnerable area insofar as it provided direct access for Yakutian ships entering Confederation space. Whoever was put in charge of patrolling it had been given a thankless task. If the Yakutians chose to arrive en masse there was virtually nothing that a single ship could do to halt them. At best, they would be able to launch a warning drone in the hope that it wouldn’t be intercepted, otherwise their sacrifice would have been for nothing.

  If The Naked Spur had abandoned its normal role to come here, leaving the Confederation exposed, then that suggested that the Admiralty was finally taking the threat posed by the Da’al seriously.

  The man in charge was one Julius Winterson. Admiral Julius Winterson appeared to be in his early fifties, with a good head of hair and skin the colour of fresh tilled soil. He briefly introduced Andre Ruggia the ship’s captain and, after the usual round of pleasantries, he quickly got down to business.

  “To be frank, Captain Meyer, I’m surprised to find you still here.”

  Meyer, pulled at the sleeves of his uniform as if they were made for someone shorter.

  “Surprised? Why? We’ve been keeping an eye on the Serrayu.”

  “Forgive me, captain, but according to my situational analysis, I was expecting to find you in orbit around Tigris right about now.”

  Meyer quickly brought him up to speed regarding the fate of the Dardelion.

  “And do you know what became of the rest of the crew? Were there no survivors?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know, admiral. As you are doubtless aware, there is an enemy destroyer currently orbiting the planet.”

  Winterson looked visibly perplexed.

  “Yes, I am aware of that but the Renheim is more than a match for any destroyer.”

  “That is true,” Meyer conceded. “But you reckon without the rest of the Da’al fleet. I had no intention of jeopardising my ship without a reasonable chance of success.”

  “And yet you would allow a group of civilian vessels to carry out a major evacuation without so much as a picket ship in place.”

  Meyer glowered at Ardent as if she were solely responsible for all this. “Those ships are operating entirely outside of my jurisdiction. While I attempted to dissuade them from embarking on such a foolhardy course of action, they refused to listen. If they choose to put themselves in jeopardy then there’s precious little that I can do to stop them.”

  “If you’ll forgive me, captain, I think you’re mistaken. What you label as foolhardy strikes me as entirely laudable. These people have a clear objective: they are attempting to execute a perfectly legitimate non-combatant evacuation operation in very difficult circumstances. Why do you think the Da’al are interested in Laxx in the first place?”

  “No idea. I imagine that it has something to do with materiel. Either they want it for themselves or they want to stop us from acquiring it.”

  “And so how would the Da’al view the members of this convoy?”

  “Honestly?” Meyer puffed out his cheeks. “I very much doubt that the Da’al would take them at all seriously. They have barely enough armaments to defend themselves let alone anyone else.”

  “But as you say, by evacuating the workers their actions will frustrate the Da’al’s ability to gain access to the various minerals and metals to be found on the surface. If someone had thought to brief the miners on how to sabotage their equipment before leaving, they might have seriously impeded the Da’al’s operational effectiveness in any number of ways. Is that something you considered, captain.”