Empire of Light

Corso watched as Nancy Schiller floated forward to grab a handhold next to one door, pulling herself in close as it dragged her around. She used her teeth to pull off a glove, then reached out to tap at a screen set into the door itself.

'Fuck, it's not responding,' she a

Icy fingers twirled inside Corso's belly.

'I'll give it a try,' said Martinez.

He grabbed a handhold next to another door, as it swept by, and tapped at this door's screen. After a few moments the outline of a hand appeared, against which Martinez pressed his palm, and the door hissed open in response.

We're in, thought Corso, and realized he had been holding his breath the whole time. There were sighs of relief and whispered prayers from the others.

He floated forward, grabbing another handhold next to the door Martinez had opened, and suddenly it was the station that was spi

'I thought there were supposed to be elevators,' he grumbled to Martinez. He could feel the tiniest pull of spin-g by now, and it would only get stronger the closer they came to the centrifuge's outer rim, seventy metres away.

'Blame our friends on the bridge,' said Martinez. 'Looks like we're going to have to climb all the way down.'

Martinez let go of his handhold and pushed over to the door Nancy had tried to open. Twenty seconds later this door also slid open, to reveal a second shaft.

'Dan, take the other shaft,' instructed Martinez, turning and lowering his legs past the open door. 'Nancy, Ray, you're going with him. When you get to the ring, approach the bridge from the spin-ward direction, and we'll come at it from the other side. But wait for our signal before trying to enter it. Senator, you're with me and Ted.'

Martinez took the lead, followed by Corso, with Lamoureaux coming last. The machine-head, Corso noted, now had a perpetually distracted look on his face, like someone who had forgotten something but couldn't quite remember what.

'Ted.'

Lamoureaux finally seemed to snap out of it. 'What?'

'Something worrying you?'

'No.' Lamoureaux shook his head, then shrugged. 'But I'm getting some weird distortion noise coming through my implants.'

'Anything we need to be concerned about?'

Lamoureaux thought for a moment. 'I don't know. Maybe not.'

The inside of the shaft was studded with handholds, but Corso wasn't used to heights, and he had to fight off tendrils of panic that accompanied the slow increase of the wheel's spin-g as they approached the ring. He focused instead on the steady rhythm of his movements, while keeping his eyes fixed on the wall directly before him.

By the time they arrived at the ring, the gravity was close on two-thirds standard. Their way was now blocked by the roof of the shaft's elevator car. Martinez used a single shot from his pulse-rifle to blow out an emergency hatch in the car's roof, before climbing down inside it.

Corso dropped down on top of the car and peered inside to see Martinez studying a panel next to the closed elevator doors. The panel looked blackened and melted.

Martinez looked up at him and shrugged. 'It's been shot to pieces, and we're going to have to go through the hard way. Got the explosives?'

'Can't you just yank the doors open?'

Martinez shook his head. 'These aren't your standard-issue elevator doors, Senator.'

Corso nodded, reached into his suit's thigh pocket and withdrew the dark, slim oblong of a putty-like material before passing it down to Martinez. Corso next motioned to Lamoureaux to climb a little way back up the shaft, before following him a moment later. A minute passed before Martinez himself clambered back out of the car and crouched as close to the wall of the shaft as he could get.

A dull crunch sounded, and a sharp, rattling vibration set Corso's teeth on edge.

A trail of thick, oily smoke drifted up from inside the elevator car. Martinez dropped back down inside and braced his shoulder against the doors, which were now bent and twisted out of shape. He thumped against them several times before they suddenly slid half-open with a discordant screech.

Light flashed from beyond the opening, sparkling on Martinez's shoulder and burning a dark circle into the fabric of his suit.

Corso yelled and dropped down through the roof of the car, as Martinez staggered backwards. Corso squeezed into the tight space and managed to fire off a couple of blind shots through the half-open door.

He heard a muffled thump, then silence.

'That was stupid of me,' gasped Martinez, who had fallen back, one gloved hand pressed against his shoulder.

Corso smelled burning flesh, and forced a surge of bile back down his throat. 'Shit, I think I might actually have got him,' he said, listening carefully.

He moved forward cautiously, turning sideways to squeeze between the two buckled doors and peer through the rank, oily smoke.

The lights inside the centrifuge ring were much brighter than throughout the rest of the ship. Corso edged forward until he almost stumbled across the body of a young woman slumped forward on the gently curving deck. One side of her face was burned and blackened, and her weapon lay nearby. Headshots from a pulse-rifle such as his own were invariably fatal.

He stood up and pulled his glove back on, but found to his surprise that his hands were shaking so hard it took a couple of attempts. He drew in a couple of deep breaths, and ignored the welter of regret and shame floating just under his thoughts. They still had to get to the bridge.

Hearing a grunt from behind, he turned to see Lamoureaux helping Martinez out through the elevator doors. Martinez spared the dead girl only a brief glance, but Lamoureaux stared at her corpse in open-mouthed horror.

'Let's get moving,' said Martinez, stepping on past the body.

Corso put a hand on his chest. 'Wait a second, you're not going anywhere. You've just been shot-'

Martinez met his gaze. 'Right now our priority is to get to the bridge. Soon as we're in control there, I can go to the med-bay. But not before.' The Mjollnir felt deserted without its full complement of crew. Like a ghost ship, Ty thought, as he and Olivarri moved along echoing passageways and down co

They passed storage bays filled with towering steel racks that had clearly been newly installed while he had still been held inside the Senate Residency. He saw new computer equipment, and observed that dozens of medboxes had been slotted into some of the racks. Many more were piled on giant pallets that filled up much of the remaining space within the bay.

They moved on, soon reaching the laboratory complex, which was sealed off from the rest of the ship by its own airlock system. The labs were designed primarily for assessing planetary biospheres, and Ty was not surprised to find that they too had been overhauled and upgraded since he had last been there.

'Why all the precautions?' asked Leo, casting a wary eye around him. There were new cryogenic facilities that could be used for storing biological specimens, as well as for incubation and dissection. There were also airtight isolation booths for storing live samples, their interiors visible in a bank of monitors set into one bulkhead directly above the main interface.

Ty took a seat next to a console and pulled off his suit's gloves to log on. 'Remember the Mjollnir was primarily used as a colony ship,' he said without looking up. 'These labs were built so they could analyse alien flora and fauna. That means keeping them in strict isolation in case of any potential biohazards.' He nodded over his shoulder at the main airlock. 'You don't want to take the chance of the rest of the ship getting contaminated, if something nasty gets loose.'