Empire of Light

Just as time seemed to run out, the Atn started to slide forward, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed. It scraped against the stone floor and then collided with the facing wall. They stumbled after it, using their hands to try and steer it away from either side.

As the spiders finished their programmed burn, the Atn kept moving forward under its own momentum, dead limbs flailing as it drifted up from the floor and towards the ceiling, turning slowly as it went.

'Don't let it get turned around too far!' Nancy yelled. 'If it gets wrapped up in the cables, it'll pull the spiders in towards it.'

The Atn smashed into the ceiling and lost some of its momentum. At least, Ty thought, they had it moving in the right direction. It scraped grit and dust from one wall as it drifted onwards.

'Okay,' said Ty. 'Second burn, now.'

He tapped at his arm console and triggered the second blast of energy. The spiders shot towards the mouth of the shaft, drawing the cables taut once more, and dragging the Atn's lifeless form after them.

The second burn seemed to last for ever.

The spiders finally ran out of fuel, and the cables grew slack once more as the Atn drifted forward, colliding with the three spiders and grinding one of them to pieces against a hard surface. Smashed components and delicate robot arms were sent flying, but it was heading in the right direction. A few seconds later the alien's body finally sailed out into the main shaft, spi

Several spiders had been hovering nearby, and their programmed sense of self-preservation made them scatter like fish disturbed by a shark as the Atn went crashing into the main shaft's opposite wall. It then rebounded at a fraction of its original velocity, tangled in cables, from the spiders still tethered to it.

Ty looked up along the shaft towards the external entrance and saw a ring of stars surrounding the bulky silhouette of the fast launcher. A cable extended down from it, its tip swaying just a few metres above them.

He gri

The Atn kept rotating slowly, more or less hanging in the centre of the shaft. Ty managed to cling to one of its legs long enough to secure the cable to it. He pulled himself on top of the Atn, then opened a link to Cesar.

'Nathan,' came the response. 'How's it going down there? Are we ready to move?'

'Yeah,' Ty replied. 'Start pulling it in right now.'

'Sure thing.' The cable drew taut, causing the Atn's body to twist around a little faster, swinging from side to side like a huge ungainly pendulum. Ty kicked himself away from its bulk, and landed against the shaft wall just a moment later.

He felt a powerful tremor rumble through his gloved fingertips the moment they came into contact with the shaft wall. More dust began to slowly billow out from the passageway entrance, as well as from the other passageways both above and below. He noticed a moment later that Cesar's icon had blinked out. He tried to hail him, but didn't get an answer.

'That had to be something big hitting the asteroid,' said Nancy, sounding panicky. 'Get to the surface, Nathan, now.'

Ty didn't bother answering. He summoned a spider and grabbed its handholds. The passageway began to drop out of sight as the machine carried him back to the surface.

Looking upwards, he realized that the launcher's attitudinal systems were having to fight to keep it in place over the mouth of the shaft. Whatever had slammed into the asteroid might have done so hard enough to increase its otherwise barely perceptible rotation, and the Atn's inert form swinging about inside the shaft wasn't helping either. It was then he noticed one of the launcher's fuel nozzles was firing only sporadically.

'Cesar? Cesar, can you hear me?' Ty yelled into his comms, but the other man's life-support icon stayed dark. Next he tried pinging the Mjollnir, and felt a chill sweat spring up between his shoulder blades when there was no response. He started to wonder just what they were going to find waiting for them up on the asteroid's surface.

It was possible, of course, that the frigate's crew were under attack and too busy to reply. It was just as possible that they had already jumped out of the system, and abandoned the outside team. Worse, the frigate might have been destroyed by whatever had hit the asteroid.

He glanced down at Nancy, who was also being carried upwards by a spider, and tried to think of something he could say that might make both of them feel better. He drew a blank.

'Nancy, if something's happened to Cesar, I don't know how to fly the launcher.'

'Let me worry about that.'

Ty glanced at his visor's life-support indicators. They each had about half an hour's oxygen supply left.

The Atn was finally drawn inside the rear cargo hatch of the launcher, the craft veering to one side as the Atn crashed into its interior bay. Its boosters cut out a moment later.

'Don't worry,' Nancy said quickly. 'I just took control of the launcher.'

Ty released the spider's handholds, letting his own momentum carry him towards a set of rungs fixed to the launcher's exterior.

'Get up front and strap yourself in,' Nancy shouted, already pulling herself up the other side of the launcher. 'Move it, Nathan.'

The launcher was entirely open to vacuum, and was little more than a computer-controlled rocket platform with two pairs of seats mounted on its nose. At the rear, four primary nozzles angled outwards from the cargo bay that comprised most of the craft's volume. As Ty got into his seat, he glanced up and felt relief wash over him like a tide. The Mjollnir was still right where it should be.

A dense cloud of dust was rising from some point just around the curve of the asteroid's narrow horizon. A fog of ice and grit now covered its surface. Whatever had struck it must have been big.

'What about Cesar?' he asked.

Nancy was already strapped in and stabbing at the launcher's control console. 'Your guess is as good as mine.'

'He should have been here at the controls.'

'We abandoned some equipment at the camp, remember. All I can think is he must have left the launcher ru

'Thanks for that thought,' Ty replied.

'Just strap in and get ready. This is going to be a rough ride.'

Ty then caught sight of a suited figure drifting close to the asteroid's surface, partially obscured by the clouds of grit and ice. It took a few moments before he realized with a shock that the lower half of Cesar's body was missing. He pointed this out to Nancy and she cursed. 'He should have stayed with the damn launcher.'

'I guess he must have been hit by debris. We're lucky the launcher wasn't wiped out the same way.'

'Right now, I just want to get the hell out of here before we wind up like him.'

Something flashed out of the sky and the asteroid was struck a second time. A fresh plume of grey dust and ice shot up from its surface.

'I'm going to perform a fast burn,' a

'Got it.'

If I were the swarm, he thought, I'd collect chunks of rock from somewhere and accelerate them close to the speed of light. All it would take was a simple railgun technology; the rocks didn't even need to be very big to cause a lot of damage once they had reached relativistic speeds.