“During our raid on their camp, we took one of their shuttle pilots captive.”

  “Great!” Dalbiri laughed. “Hope you guys had a pleasant chat.”

  “Actually, we did,” Nash dead panned.

  “Really?” Kekkonen sat bolt upright. “Since when have we been able to speak their language?”

  “That’s classified,” said Nash before turning back to Webster. “Go on.”

  Webster let out a long sigh. He didn’t appreciate having to do Nash’s dirty work. Didn’t appreciate it at all. But everyone had a job to do.

  “Did you really have a conversation with one of these things?” Marsh asked Webster directly.

  Webster looked to the other man for clearance.

  Nash gave a curt nod.

  “Mr Nash spoke with them.”

  The scientists took some time processing this new information.

  “Okay. And what was said?” Dalbiri wanted to know.

  Webster said, “You know how, initially, we were worried that the Da’al planned to target Earth Prime and our other colonies?”

  A few of them nodded.

  “Well, we were wrong about that. That’s not their goal after all.”

  “Okay, so what do they want?”

  Webster went on. “The current Da’al task force has no intention of traveling to the Sol system – if they’re even aware of its existence.”

  “They’re here to destroy the Henrietta Gate,” Nash said.

  Dalbiri and Marsh rose to their feet.

  “Destroy it!” Dalbiri said. “But it’s enormous. Is that even possible?”

  “Technically, yes.”

  Kekkonen hadn’t moved. He had his head down, thinking.

  Then he looked at Nash. “That’s why you’ve beefed up our comms: you’re waiting for a reply.”

  “Hell, yes,” Dalbiri said, punching a fist into the palm of his hand. “That’s not going to go down too well back home. When does the battle fleet arrive?”

  Nash put the metre rule down. “You know about as much as I do. We have to sit tight until we get a reply. In the meantime, we’re operating in the dark.”

  “Which explains why they’re in no hurry to get boots on the ground down here,” Markham said. “If they’re successful. If they manage to shut down the gate, then they’ve got all the time in the world to reclaim this ship of theirs. It’s not going anywhere.”

  “Do you still think that’s it?” Webster asked, turning to the scientists. “The reason they’re here, I mean. Are they so desperate to get their hands on this thing that they’re willing to shut off an entire solar system to do so?”

  He surveyed the four scientists.

  “You see,” Marsh said. “I think…”

  But the reaction of her colleagues was enough to silence her. They sat around uncomfortably, scrupulously avoiding giving one another eye contact.

  “What is it?” Nash demanded. “What aren’t you telling us?”

  “Nothing,” Marsh offered. “Just thinking out loud. Sorry.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  LaCruz was more worried about removing Barnes’ armour than she was about what she might find underneath.

  It was cold enough outside to freeze flesh and she was concerned that if she couldn’t re-configure Barnes’ suit once she’d finished patching him up, there was a very good chance he might freeze to death. The chest plate came away with a blast of gas and she carefully laid it up against the wall of the cave they were currently sheltering in.

  The suits all came equipped with their own repair kits and she figured it wouldn’t take too long to repair the bullet hole. In that regard, they’d been lucky that the second shot had only delivered a glancing blow. If the angle had been slightly different, Barnes’ spine would have been shattered.

  Before she could start to dress the wound, she had to wipe away the thick layer of glutinous gel which covered Barnes’ skin. Most of the gel had turned a disturbing black colour and as she started to scrape this away she realised that she was disturbing enormous clots of blood. She was appalled and impressed with how well the gel’s coagulant features had managed to cope with the initial blood loss, helping to control the bleeding.

  She could only guess at how much blood he’d already lost.

  Under normal circumstances, he’d have been whisked away to nearest medibay for a complete blood transfusion but, out here, there was no chance of that.

  “What about it, doc? Think I’ll make it?” Barnes said, trying to lighten the mood.

  She couldn’t see his face but could tell from his breathing that he was struggling.

  There was an ugly three-inch wound in the left part of his chest. Deep enough that she could glimpse the muscle underneath. A lot of the tissue around it had already turned dark red, not the bright pink she’d been hoping for. Still, the fact that it was oozing blood rather than bleeding uncontrollably had to be a good sign.

  “Just a scratch,” she said, figuring that what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. “I’m more concerned about the possibility of an infection than anything else. So, I’m just going to clean this up a little.”

  She removed the sanitising spray from the first aid kit, no easy feat considering the gloves she was wearing, and sprayed it over the wound. There’d been a whole section about microbes and the possible risk of infection posed by the planet’s surface in their mission brief but, for the life of her, she couldn’t remember any of that now.

  “How long do you think we’ve got?” he asked. “Before the others get here?”

  LaCruz looked back over her shoulder as if expecting to see the Da’al troops enter the canyon at that precise moment but when they didn’t, she returned to her job: opening a packet of magnesium powder.

  “Hard to tell. Based on that last sighting, I’d say we’ve got a good three-hour lead. Long enough.”

  “True, but yesterday it was four hours. What’s it going to be tomorrow?”

  Time for a change of subject, she decided.

  She sprinkled the magnesium over the wound and initially, nothing happened. Then he sat bolt upright, uttered a string of expletives and tried to push her away from him. It was all she could do not to drop the first aid kit she was holding.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Says magnesium on the packet. Helps to cauterise the wound.”

  “Magnesium? As in magnesium flare? The stuff that burns.”

  “I guess so. Why? Does it hurt?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know, I’m just the nurse,” she said playfully. “Doctor’ll be along shortly. Wants to talk to you about your insurance – seems there’s some kind of shortfall.”

  “Yeah, that’d be just about my luck,” he pushed her hands away. “Have we finished yet?”

  “No, just getting started,” she said. “You’ll have to give me a minute now while I find my sewing kit.”

  “Sewing kit?”

  “Yeah, close that wound up nice and pretty. You know how I just loves to sew,” as she was speaking, she unclipped a slim metal suture gun from her waist. She wanted to keep him distracted so she said, “I’m just looking for my thread now. What colour would you like? Red or blue?”

  “I don’t know,” he said dismissively. “You choose.”

  “Alright then.”

  And with that, she fired five tightly spaced sutures around the wound.

  To his credit, though Barnes let fly with a long list of expletives, he stayed poker stiff throughout.

  “You finished, now ?”

  “Just need to stick on a fresh dressing and you’re good to go.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you could hurry it along. It’s getting a mite cold out there. I didn’t say anything earlier but I think my nipple may have frozen off.”

  “Stop complaining, you’re doing just fine.”

  After that, she turned her attention to repairing his chest panel. It was just a question of selecting the appropriate patch and welding it into place with a hand-held laser. Pretty straight forward stuff so long as she didn’t get sloppy with the laser, which she didn’t. Once she’d finished with that, she had to wait a minute for it to cool down, then she had to check the seal. It seemed okay, not that she had the equipment to check it properly. So long as the suit wasn’t exposed to vacuum, he’d be fine.

  Finally, she had to turn her attention to re-attaching the section. She was thinking about how to best go about it when Barnes took it from her and pressed it back into place with three satisfying clicks. After a short pause while the suit re-pressurised itself, they were good to go.

  They sat there for a while longer even though they both knew how important it was for them to preserve their lead over the others. They probably had another hour and a half left before they lost the light. There was a single track up ahead which the drifting snow was doing its best to eradicate. Over the near ridge they could see two peaks pressed against the white of the sky.

  The peak to the left was low, long and flat while the one to their right looked far more testing.

  “You know we’re heading the wrong way, LaCruz. You know that, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re heading off in a north easterly direction. Except, that other camp they were talking about – well, that’s thirty clicks away, over to our west. But then, you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  LaCruz let out a long breath. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  She didn’t see the point in jeopardising the security of the others if they had managed to survive. If they were to risk contacting them, they couldn’t hope to do so with a group of Da’al troops in tow.

  “So that’s the plan then? Off into the wilderness. Away from the others – even if they did make it down?”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure they made it,” LaCruz said, though she thought no such thing. “We might even be able to contact them, if we could manage to get that radio working.”

  Barnes had been the only one equipped with a long-range radio but so far it had failed to pick up anything.

  “I told you already: I’ve tried that.”

  “Well, you know what they say: if at first you don’t succeed…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

  From his tone, she knew she’d already pushed him too far for one day. It wouldn’t do to push him any further.

  The wind changed direction briefly, sending a squall of snow spiralling around them. They looked at one another, neither of them choosing to speak.

  Clayton Barnes slowly got to his feet. He turned to survey the two peaks up ahead.

  “What do you think? Left or right?”

  LaCruz turned her optics up to ten times magnification as she studied each peak in turn.

  “What do you think?” she asked. They were going to have to work together on this.

  “Well, we can’t keep running forever, that’s for sure. We need somewhere we can hold up defend.”

  “Which sort of rules out that left peak. They could come at us from all angles.”

  “Least we’d see ‘em coming. And, that way, we could take a few of them with us.”

  Oh, so that’s what this was all about.

  A heroic last stand.

  “How’s about we wait ‘til we get to that next ridge,” she suggested. “Make our call then?”

  Barnes dropped his head and started off up the path.

  “All the same to me.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ardent stood over Faulkner’s bed. It was with some relief that she noted that he looked considerably improved since the last time she’d seen him. His body was sheathed up to the neck in one of those figure-hugging suits people tended to wear after major skin replacement therapy – clean, white and clinical. They’d also given him a shave, which was a vast improvement, and his skin looked pink, clean and scrubbed. His cheeks also looked a little fuller, like he’d put on weight though she couldn’t determine whether that was true or whether it was just some clever trick of the light.

  Perhaps the surroundings did have something to do with it, she thought, holding onto the bed’s head frame. But, in retrospect, he couldn’t have looked any worse than the pitiful wretch she’d first seen hidden away in the bowels of the Renheim. The reality of what must have happened to him had yet to fully register with her – she’d been too distracted by what was happening on Laxx for it to have fully hit home.

  Twenty minutes ago, Loki had launched a probing volley at the space station. Farnese had told her to expect this as the enemy attempted to test their defensive capabilities, but still it came as a shock.

  She watched as the analgesics and antiemetic drugs Sands had given Faulkner started to work their magic. He’d timed this all perfectly. With any luck, she’d be able to oversee Faulkner’s current round of treatments without missing the action up on the main deck. To that end, she’d asked for the screen feeds to be switched on, keeping the sound muted at Sands’ insistence: they couldn’t afford too many distractions at this delicate juncture.

  The Galaxian was coupled up against the side of the orbital like a baby being suckled by its mother. They had been loading passengers for the past hour but this still this didn’t seem to have thinned the crowds swarming around the station’s main lobby. Nonetheless, she had to believe that this whole exercise would soon be over and that they’d all be able to breathe normally once more.

  Then the picture on the screen switched to a long exterior shot of one of the station’s point defence platforms. The missiles streaked in, almost too fast to be seen and the flash of the silent detonations, as each one was destroyed, caused her to catch her breath. They might have been expecting this but still the sight of incoming missiles coming within range was a disheartening sight. What if the missiles had somehow managed to get through and impacted against the station’s fragile hull? What then?

  She supposed that was the point of the Da’al ship’s show of strength. To let them know what they were capable of without ever having to come within range of the other Confederation ships and having to prove itself in real terms.

  Meyer had said that such actions were ’cowardly’ and, for once, Ardent found herself in agreement with him. Threatening civilians in order to gain a tactical advantage? Yes, ‘cowardly’ just about covered it. But then, when was warfare ever truly noble?

  Someone coughed behind her and she looked round to find two nurses standing there. Sands had hand-picked them as much for their discretion as for their nursing abilities. Ardent had arranged for a series of payments to be channelled into the bank account of their choosing as a way of ensuring that none of this managed to find its way back to Meyer’s desk.

  He’d already tried to have Faulkner disposed of once before and she didn’t want to give him a second chance.

  The woman who had coughed inclined her head towards the bed.

  Feeling foolish, Ardent turned to see Faulkner looking up at her, his blue eyes bright and flecked with white.

  “How are you feeling?” she said.

  “Old and in pain,” his eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?”

  She looked over at Sands who was standing in the corner.

  He slowly shook his head.

  They’d discussed this aspect of Faulkner’s treatment at some length. It was common for patients coming out of a deep sleep state like this to remain disorientated for weeks, even months, afterwards and Sands had been clear that he should be given only the briefest of details about what was actually going on.

  If nothing else, it was imperative that she refrain from distressing him in any way.

  “I just popped by to see how you were feeling.”

  He moved his head experimentally. He had the haunted look of a starved child.

  “Confused.”

  “That will pass. The doctor had to give you one of those battle-field shots. The sort that gets you up and about in no time.”

  Faulkner raised a hand in acknowledgement but said nothing. Then he tried sit up although, lacking the necessary muscle control, he almost succeeded in rolling himself off the bed. Ardent managed to catch him in time and held him there while the two nurses stepped forward to assist.

  One of the women turned and with a low whistle, summoned the wheelchair. Its motors whirred as it backed itself into the best position to receive him.

  By this time, the picture on the screen had changed. It was showing groups of families moving towards a small number of access gates. Many of the passengers were carrying personal possessions while the children all wore backpacks. No one appeared to be in charge and the sense of growing panic coming through the screen was palpable. Ardent couldn’t think what it must be like to be there in person, especially with young children.

  Back in the room, the nurses were detaching Faulkner’s I.V. lines, while he took the opportunity to scrutinise his surroundings.

  “I don’t remember any of this,” he said.

  “Oh, this? This is all new. Only the best is good enough for Captain Faulkner.”

  That seemed to placate him and he closed his eyes as if preparing for a nap.

  Sands moved around the side of the bed, he was holding what looked like a shiny, copper colored badge, at the centre of which was a wicked looking spike. Without warning, he drove it straight into the back of Faulkner’s neck.

  Ardent bit her lip as she watched the older man writhing around in an attempt to fend Sands off but eventually the nerve suppressor began to take effect and his head lolled forward.

  “Are you sure he’s going to be alright?” she said. “He seemed very…”

  “Disorientated? That’s to be expected in cases such as this.”

  It was a short walk to the operating theatre, the wheelchair moving soundlessly while Ardent walked alongside. The two nurses flanked her with Dr Sands bringing up the rear.

  The wheelchair turned right and they passed a room containing one of the daunting new auto-docs. Two nurses stood either side as something vaguely human was being twisted first one way and then the other. Ardent made the mistake of looking over and caught sight of a splintered rib cage, blackened lungs fighting for air.