Adam had never fought Nekatra before, and the desperate minutes of battle with those fierce beasts were his most vivid memories of the Firebirds’ escape from the Ghazali. After several minutes’ walk in dark and smoky corridors from the stasis chamber forward towards the bridge they reached the open area in front of the pool. They crossed the deserted plaza to the door that Siladan indicated, and Al Hamra used his data tag to open a door into a service area. At the rear of the service room he opened a second, heavier door and Adam stepped into a narrow, pitch-dark room lined with shelves. While Al Hamra shone a torch over his shoulder he took in an array of pistols, carbines and ammunition cartridges, set low in the wall below hanging suits of reinforced deck clothes.

  He moved quickly, handing a pistol and several reloads to Dr. Delecta and then handing weapons over to the crew-members as they requested them: For Al Hamra and Olivia, vulcan carbines with lots of reloads, an accelerator pistol and a few reloads for Saqr and Siladan, who also took a sword, and finally for himself the entire selection. Then he dug out some armoured vests, none of which were small enough for Saqr, and they kitted up.

  “Saqr is our pilot,” Al Hamra pointed out. “We may need her for the bridge, so she stays in the middle and under cover. Clear?” He looked sternly at Saqr, who threw him a very amateur salute. “Adam, you take the front. Delecta, as the doctor you stay in the middle as well, clear?” Once they all had their roles assigned they returned to the plaza and entered the pool itself, Adam and Olivia doing a hamfisted defensive door entry manoeuvre.

  Their caution was unwarranted, because they stepped into a vast empty pool hall, looking out over a scene of destruction and chaos unfolding in the vacuum outside.

  The pool had been drained of water, and because the Ghazali had been scheduled for scrap when it had been commissioned by the Colonial Agency it had not been refilled or touched in any way, so in the dim, intermittent emergency light it formed a dark empty void two dozen metres long and a dozen across. It ran parallel to the viewing dome, the far side abutting the base of the huge plexiglass viewing window to form the ultimate infinity pool, from which swimmers could stare out on the gulf of space itself. On the opposite side, where they had entered the room, was a wide concourse that had once held pool chairs on which passengers would lounge while they stared through the huge viewing dome at the distant stars, and the cold deeps between them. Now it was deserted, silent and dark, the edges of the concourse shrouded in shadow and the pool itself darker than the night outside.

  As they filed in, however, they realized that the ship was spinning, and the orb of a brilliant white star swam rapidly into view, flooding the pool hall with a harsh silver light as the viewscreen atuomatically dimmed to cut almost all the star’s light and protect their eyes. They blinked and screened their eyes for a moment until the viewscreen fully adjusted, reducing the star to the light of a bright moon as it moved rapidly across the viewscreen, a small but potent disc that filled the room with brilliant light and harsh shadows. In its light suddenly they could see movement in space outside the view screen, as pieces of debris and jumbled, twisted metal spun past. A small spaceship, perhaps a hundred metres long, tumbled helplessly in space less than a kilometre away, gasses streaming from multiple holes in its hull and cargo spreading in a slow arc behind it from an open cargo bay. Then the sun spun out of view and the scattered debris receded into shadow, invisible against the night sky.

  “That’s not Taoan,” Saqr observed. “Taoan’s a red giant, and that’s a white dwarf. I think that means we’re still in the Hamura system.”

  “What’s with all the debris?” Siladan asked. “Was that ship attached to the Ghazali?” In their haste to assemble a rescue fleet the Colonial Agency had recruited a large number of freelance crews, who had docked their ships to the outside of the Ghazali in order to preserve space in the hangar in case it were needed during the evacuation of the mining colony on Taoan.

  “I think so,” Saqr said. “What else would it be doing out here?” She held her arm up to the viewing dome, squinting down it at her extended thumb. “You know, I reckon that the star was half an AU away, which means we’re close to the Portals.” As she said this she scanned the sky, finally pointing at a glittering object in the top right corner of the viewing dome. “There!” She declared. “That’s a Portal station. But it looks …”

  They watched the Portal station slide across the viewing dome, flickering in and out of view as light from the sun it orbited disappeared and reappeared through floating wreckage. “Don’t see anything special,” Adam muttered as it dropped out of view.

  “I think it’s damaged,” Saqr whispered. “And the Ghazali is spinning fast. Did someone attack the Portal?” She kept her voice to a whisper, in awe at the suggestion of such an act of interstellar vandalism.

  “Is that even possible?” Olivia asked.

  “Only one way to find out,” Al Hamra said. “We gotta get to the Bridge. Or get the computer working. Computer!” He called its name, but they received no response except the occasional emergency siren. “Bridge it is,” he said finally. “Siladan, find us a path.”

  Siladan drew out his tabula, began fiddling, and after a few seconds announced he had a path. They piled through the portal door into the plaza outside, running across it to the hallway he pointed to. After they had run about twenty metres into the hallway and the Plaza was hidden behind a bend in the superstructure they came to a halt, stumbling in the darkness. “No lights,” Adam grunted unnecessarily.

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  Torches flashed on, cutting swathes of white light through the faint mist hanging in the air. They moved on, walking slowly and carefully with Adam at the front and Siladan at the rear, the light slung under Adam’s carbine throwing a warmer orange glow along the plain walls and doors of the hallway. “Is this residential?” Al Hamra asked, as they passed ranks of closed doors.

  “Think so,” Siladan replied, and as he finished his sentence they all lurched upward with a sudden, sickening jerk. Dr. Delecta shrieked, and for a couple of seconds they fell away from the floor, moving upward with the force of their last step before the gravity returned and they fell back to earth.

  “That isn’t promising,” Olivia observed. “Graviton projectors are failing.”

  “Gravity’s a bit lower,” Saqr said, calling on her uncanny stationary sense of the nuance of shipborne gravity.

  “Lights gravity purification dispensing pumping heating cooling scrubbing oxygen,” Olivia muttered, repeating the mantra to herself once quietly. “The order of life support failure,” she explained when Dr. Delecta asked her what she was chanting.

  “Not always,” Saqr contradicted her with a too-cheerful voice. “If the ship’s core computer systems are corrupted the order can change. Things can go weird.”

  As she finished her sentence a loud howl echoed down the hallway from behind them, the same primal wail they had heard when they emerged from the stasis hold. “What the fuck is that?” Al Hamra asked, and then, “Whatever, keep moving. Olivia, keep an eye out behind us. Siladan, what’s next?”

  “A small plaza,” Siladan told him, “With a junction. Just around the corner.”

  Another howl sounded ahead of them, joined by others that seemed further away, as they turned a corner and exited the hallway into a larger plaza. It was taller than the corridors they had been walking through, the ceiling a floor above and the area they stood in overlooked by mezzanines beneath which shuttered shops surrounded an open central space, in the middle of which a fountain sat silent and dry. Four hallways led off from the plaza. “Which way?” Al Hamra asked, turning to face Siladan, but as he did so they caught sight of movement on the mezzanine above.

  Adam whipped around, pointing his gun and its torch up to the balcony above them, and as he did so the howls resumed, this time much louder and closer. “Fuck!” Someone swore, and then a huge a beast leapt down on them from the mezzanine. It was as big as Al Hamra, something shaped between a human and a dog, with long canine jaws that slathered and snapped as it landed on powerfully-muscled hind legs and lunged forward, leaping at Adam with a frenzied hunger. He opened fire, a burst of vulcan fire that hit the thing in the shoulder and exploded in sprays of shrapnel across the walls of the shops beyond it, but it did not stop and barreled straight into him, knocking him back with a snarling rage as he stumbled and fell away from the group. Al Hamra spun around, pulling his pistol and shooting at its back as it passed him by, but his caution to avoid shooting Adam made him miss. Siladan stepped forward past the bald squad leader and swept his sword up in a vertical crescent, the blade biting deep into the beast’s side and bringing a fountain of blood onto the deck. It screamed and rolled away, springing to its feet and limping back towards the far wall of the plaza, walking like a human on two dog-like hind legs. A bulky collar ringed its neck, and its claws dripped with blood.

  “Nekatra,” Adam snarled as he staggered to his feet, blood dripping from his arm. More howls sounded, and in the light of Saqr’s flashlight they saw more movement on the mezzanine. Adam and Olivia fired randomly at the balconies, and the shadowed figures disappeared from view.

  “Which way Siladan!” Al Hamra demanded, and the bulky man slid his sword away, pulling out his tabula and flicking around on it, desperately trying to confirm the route.

  As he fussed with his tabula another beast emerged from the hallway they had come from, sprinting towards them with howls and grunts of vicious hunger. Saqr and Dr. Delecta both turned to shoot it, and as it scuttled away from their guns its claws clattered and scraped loudly on the polished plaza floor. Three more of the things leapt down from above, landing among the group with a crash. One landed on its side, fatally wounded by Adam’s gunfire, and the room reverberated with the clash and boom of guns as they all tried to drive the beasts back. “That way!” Siladan yelled and dashed towards one of the corridors, drawing his sword as another beast dashed towards them out of the shadows of the far side of the plaza.

  “Go!” Adam yelled to Dr. Delecta, turning to lay vulcan fire in a fusilade of exploding cartridges across the space between them and the door they had come through. She fell back with Siladan and Al Hamra, and two more monsters lunged forward, one disappearing in a roar of gunfire and a spray of gore and blood. They turned and ran, diving into the hallway as another beast slammed into the wall behind them, and hurtled around a corner into another dark corridor. In the darkness the light on Adam’s carbine cut confused, distracting beams behind them, and the hallway lit up with brilliant flashes and booms as he fired back the way they had come. Something screamed and howled and someone stumbled, and then Dr. Delecta’s flashlight was on, pointing at the floor at their feet. The sound of snarling animals receded, and they came to a gasping halt as Al Hamra rustled around in his backpack, breaking glowlights and hanging them on his belt. The room flooded with a cool, dim blue light, and they looked around. They were in a wider hallway where a stairwell cut up and down, making more space to look around. Dim emergency light glowed in the floor of the stairs, casting a faint red radiance on the far side of the room. Dr. Delecta put her flaslight down and moved to check Adam’s arm, squatting down with her medkit, as Al Hamra counted them off.

  “Fuck,” the squad leader said finally. “Where are Olivia and Saqr?”

  They looked around, but the tiny pilot and the strangely pale-skinned engineer were not with them. Siladan called their names, but there was no reply.

  “Curses of the Icons,” Al Hamra whispered. “Without a pilot and an engineer we can’t get this ship working again, or escape.” He slammed his hand on the wall, the bang echoing down the stairways in the sudden silence. “Curses of the Gambler.” He turned to face the others.

  “We are doomed without them. We have to find them.”