The armoured marines marched Andy through the airlock and onto the freighter they’d arrived on. He could hear a faint knocking and muffled shouting coming from the rear of the ship, as if someone was locked in. Realising they were most likely going to do that to him too, he relaxed a bit.
He soon tensed up again as instead of turning right towards the cabins, they went straight on across the ship to the identical airlock on the opposite side.
The ship suddenly shook alarmingly, which, judging from the marines’ reaction, wasn’t planned, and a few objects clattered off the hull outside. The marines stood motionless for a moment. Andy deduced they were most likely communicating with their vessel somewhere out there, and he hoped it wasn’t parts of their vessel that’d just impacted with the freighter.
A decision must have been made, as one of them dropped something on the floor inside the airlock. It popped open and began inflating into a tall cylinder shape.
‘Is that a rescue pod?’ Andy asked. He’d heard of them, but had never actually seen one in operation.
One of the marines nodded once.
‘Get in,’ his electronic voice ordered.
Andy crouched down and slid up inside the slightly claustrophobic cylinder. He found he had a tiny porthole window and if he hunched down he could just see out.
The marine who’d spoken sealed the opening with some sort of plastic zipper, while the other operated the airlock. He felt the bag expand and creak as the atmosphere vented. The outer door opened and they pushed him out. Weightlessness followed, causing him to float about in the pod and he had to keep repositioning himself to see where they were going.
A small GDA vessel with damage on one side slowly floated into view and then out again as the bag rotated leisurely. He noticed they were in a narrow cavern at the end of a ravine; the jagged edges of the rock walls nearby looked frighteningly close to the thin plastic bubble keeping him alive.
He felt a huge surge of relief when the bag rotated around again and he was only feet away from an open airlock. The welcome pull of gravity dropped the bag to the floor.
He ended up lying on his back, but he didn’t care as he felt the vibration of the outer door rumbling shut. The gradual reassuring sound of atmosphere hissing into the small space came next, before the bag was zipped open again and he was pulled out by his feet.
The two armoured marines clunked away, leaving him with a short stocky man with incredibly bushy eyebrows and a scar running around his chin. He wore standard-issue GDA marine fatigues displaying the rank of sergeant, a black beanie hat and the unlit remnants of a cigar precariously dangling from the corner of his mouth. Andy thought he looked like a young John Wayne.
‘Are the others alive?’ he asked with a raspy voice, before turning his head away and coughing.
‘Those things’ll be the death of you,’ said Andy, nodding at the cigar.
‘We’re not talking about my health; I want to know if your friends are alive?’
‘So you can kill them if they are?’ Andy answered.
‘The other two didn’t tell you who we are?’
Andy shook his head slowly.
‘Who do you work for?’ he asked.
‘I’m Sergeant Imeres of Marine Special Operations Team 4. Currently under the command of Captain Pickyrd of the 28.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Andy, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. ‘You’ll have to do better than that. I witnessed the 28 exploding days ago on the Klatt border.’
Imeres smiled for the first time.
‘Actually, you didn’t,’ he said. ‘But I can’t blame you for that, because it was exactly what you were supposed to believe.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘The ship you saw explode was an elaborate hologram emitted from a specially modified drone.’
‘But the explosion was immense. It’d take more than a drone to wipe out five hundred ships.’
‘Our ship had been sabotaged with a huge quantity of tycelerin powdercake wrapped around the fuel cell during a refit and we—’
‘Tycelerin?’ blurted Andy, interrupting the sergeant, his eyes wide. Andy glanced back at the airlock. ‘D’you know what’s just over there?’ he asked, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.
‘An old Krix’ir freighter?’
‘Not that – this rock we’re sitting under.’
‘We concluded it was an old abandoned mine.’
Andy smirked this time while shaking his head.
‘Mine is correct,’ he said. ‘Abandoned it isn’t.’
‘Mining what?’
‘Tycell ore.’
This time the sergeant’s eyes went wide.
‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ said Andy.
‘You think our powdercake came from here?’
‘How many other illegal tycell mines have you discovered recently?’
‘And where they secretly imprisoned anyone discovering their plot,’ the sergeant continued.
‘Precisely.’
He paced back and forth, rubbing his stubbly chin.
‘You never answered my question,’ he said.
‘Yes, the others are alive.’
‘Nearby?’
‘Waiting by the inner airlock of that docking tube your colleagues found me in.’
‘We need to retrieve them.’
‘Before we do that – how did you get to be here?’
‘Following you. The captain witnessed your abduction and tasked us to follow.’
‘Why didn’t he come himself?’
‘A second team went after Edward Virr. He was being framed for the destruction of our ship and the captain wasn’t happy about that. The 28 remained hidden in the Prasinos system waiting for that team to return.’
‘I noticed your ship has damage,’ said Andy, remembering what he saw from the survival bag.
‘Something exploded against our shields,’ he said. ‘Pushed us against the rock wall.’
‘A mine?’
‘Maybe – if it was, it was cloaked.’
‘Mines aren’t normally cloaked are they?’
‘No, it’s actually illegal.’
‘What damage did you sustain?’
‘Lost the cloak, a few manoeuvring thrusters and the jump drive is offline.’
‘That’s not good is it? Even if we brought the others over, we can’t go anywhere and we’d stand out like a black eye.’
‘If we could just fix the jump drive, we could get back to the 28.’
‘There is that, but if you can’t – there’s a perfectly serviceable freighter just over there,’ said Andy, pointing back at the airlock.
Just as he said that, the lights dimmed for a few moments before coming back to full brightness. He gave the sergeant a questioning look.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Imeres said, nodding towards the front of the ship. ‘Let’s go and find out.’
A pair of legs protruding from under a control console greeted them when they climbed up to the cockpit. Along with the sound of swearing and the smell of burnt electrical stuff.
‘How goes it, Corporal?’ Imeres asked, giving one of the projecting boots a kick.
The sound of a clunk and further swearing echoed from under the console. A scowling man’s face appeared along with an arm rubbing a developing bruise on his forehead.
‘Thanks, sarge,’ he grumbled.
‘Where are we?’ Imeres asked, ignoring the gripe.
‘The cloak’s back up,’ he said, frowning. ‘As for the rest of it – there’s a lot of burnt-out circuitry under here and I don’t think we carry replacements for all of it.’
Another marine concealed behind one of the tall pilot’s seats made Andy jump as he swivelled around to face them.
‘Is that one of them?’ he asked, giving Andy a disapproving glance.
‘It is,’ said Imeres, pointing as a flashing symbol lit up on the pilot’s console. ‘What’s that?’
‘We’ve got company,’ the pilot said, turning back and tapping the icon as it winked at him. ‘Unidentified ship jumped in system a few seconds ago, and it’s powering towards our location.’
‘Will they have seen us before the cloak reactivated?’
‘Doubtful,’ he grunted from behind the seat. ‘Kalla had that up and running a couple of minutes ago.’
‘Move us up away from the docking tubes. I want to see who it is before we show our hand.’
A cacophony of alarms suddenly echoed around the cockpit.
‘Missile launch,’ the pilot shouted, peering nervously around the seat. ‘Six of ’em. Coming straight at us.’
‘Cannons,’ shouted Imeres.
‘Offline,’ said Kalla, from the floor.
‘Get us outta here, fast.’
‘The missiles are targeting the mine and not us,’ the pilot called as he quickly moved the ship out of the ravine and into clear space.
‘But the others are still there,’ shouted Andy. ‘My wife’s one of them.’
‘Thirty seconds to impact and the ship that fired them has jumped away,’ the pilot said.
‘How much powdercake did you say was in there?’ said Imeres, as a loud klaxon shrieked around the ship.
‘Oh, shit,’ mumbled Andy, his face white as a sheet.