Driving the Nekatra away from Saqr and Olivia had been one of the bravest and most terrifying moments of Siladan’s life. He had finished the battle covered in blood, mostly spurting from the canine/feline/human mongrel that lay dead at his feet, its throat slashed clean through moments before its huge jaws clamped around his own. He remembered staring at the thing where it lay still twitching on the deck in front of him, its stubborn determination to live driving it even after death, his hands shaking in the aftermath of the brutal battle. Adam, whose blood was also spattered across Siladan’s face, slumped on the wall next to him, Dr. Delecta already tending to a deep slash on his face. They had ambushed the two Nekatra that had Saqr and Olivia trapped in the barracks, but before they could finish the job another one had jumped them from behind, and Siladan had barely had time to get his sword out before it turned from Adam to tear him apart. A moment frozen in time, drop his pistol and pull his sword, one step back and a rapid diagonal cross-body upward crescent slice, almost a perfect training move, and the thing lay at his feet, its head half-severed and its blood all over him.

  After a few breaths to recover his poise, while Al Hamra ran forward to open the barracks door, Siladan had reached down to the beast’s neck, where a heavy metal collar ringed its severed neck. He reached through the remnants of bloody sinew to investigate, uncovering conducting plates and circuits. “I think they’re wearing shock collars,” he told Dr. Delecta.

  “Probably Legion shock troops,” Adam told him, voice muffled from behind a bandage that now swathed half his face. “Not unusual. Probably in stasis like us. Colonial Agency uses them to put down rebellions. Insurance in case the problem in Taoan is a colonial uprising.” He nodded to Dr. Delecta as she began putting away her medkit and pushed himself to his feet with a restrained sigh. “Icons-cursed Colonial Agency.” Looking down at the still corpse of the Nekatra, he prodded it slightly with one boot. “They must be very confused and very hungry.”

  Olivia and Saqr joined them, Olivia carrying a large toolbox and Saqr limping slightly. “Hurt myself running,” she told them, wincing as another gravity surge rippled through the ship and dragged them suddenly downward with a heavy extra G of weight. “Sprained.” She gave a worried look around the dim hallway as the surge passed. “Lighter again. It’s getting worse.”

  “Graviton failure tends to be exponential,” Olivia mentioned casually, patting the box. “But I found this toolbox in the barracks. Hopefully helpful if we have to get into the bridge the oldl-fashioned way.” She looked around at Siladan, covered in blood, Adam with his face now hidden behind the blood-stained bandage, Dr. Delecta repacking her medkit with shaking hands. “Thanks everyone,” she said in a small voice. “Thought we were done for in there. How’d you find us?”

  Al Hamra shrugged. “Lucky guess. Where else could you have gone?” He looked back to Siladan. “Get us out of here Siladan, before the rest of the pack find us.”

  Siladan, still shaking, nodded and pulled his tabula out. He fiddled, breathing deeply to calm himself as he charted another path to the bridge. “That way,” he said finally, gesturing to a corridor just beyond the barracks and turning the tabula to face Al Hamra. “It takes us around to the starboard side, and along the edge of the ship. Hopefully far away from them.”

  “Better hope there’s no hull damage,” Saqr commented merrily, and they were off.

  The path Siladan took them along was spectacular, a long viewing corridor that had once run a hundred meters along the edge of the ship, roughly midships above the bulge of the hangars. The corridor was lined with plexiglass viewing windows, intended to give the cruise liner’s passengers a constant view of the glories of the galaxy as they moved between entertainment zones, and now offering the gang of survivors a perfect view of the chaos unfolding outside. Hamura’s small star slid into view again, sending their shadows careening down the hall behind them as its cold white glow streaked down the hallway, and in the wake of its passage they again saw the clouds of debris streak across the starfield. A new cloud of debris surrounded the ship, pieces of hangar door and all the clutter and supplies from inside the hangar spreading slowly into space in an expanding sphere from the hangar below them. A single small starship spun slowly amongst the debris field, stationary in space relative to the Ghazali itself, occasional flickers of plasma at its stern indicating someone was attempting to make the engines fire. Saqr surmised they had blasted their way out of the hangar using explosives or the ship’s guns, but the ship’s engines were not working properly. Soon the crippled ship slid out of view again and then the little gang of survivors were back inside the ship, at a huge stairwell that seemed to penetrate the entire core of the vessel.

  “This is one of four central stairwells,” Siladan told them. Adam was already standing at the balustrade, listening carefully for howls or sounds of movement, carbine out. “There’s an exo-suit storage here, we should get into them in case the bridge is damaged.” They followed his directions to a large room with a manual door, where they quickly donned the light but uncomfortable outer clothes for decompression protection.

  “These are survival exos,” Olivia told them as she inspected Adam’s suit. “Shouldn’t last more than ten minutes in space, but good radiation shielding.” She checked the communicator in her own, confirming it worked. “This room should be radiation-shielded too. Once the helmets are on you can talk and breath, hopefully the oxygen supply isn’t irradiated.” She bustled around the room checking everyone’s suits, and once Saqr had checked hers in return they followed Siladan’s directions up the stairs.

  Four flights later they stood at the entrance to the bridge, which was sealed shut. Olivia pulled a small metal-cutter from her toolkit and began cutting the locks while Adam and Al Hamra stood guard at the stairwell, carbines pointed up and down. Through the helmets of their suits they could not easily hear howls or incoming Nekatra, relying entirely on movement, of which they saw none. Olivia warned them that the bridge might be ruptured, and as soon as the third lock fell away sizzling to the floor she and Siladan hauled the door open. Air rushed in with a loud sucking sound, but no decompression followed. Cautiously, with Adam and Olivia covering the door, Al Hamra and Siladan crept through the gap into the bridge, taking care not to touch the molten edges of the door.

  “Safe,” Olivia declared, and they took off their helmets to examine the catastrophe that had unfolded on the bridge.

  They stood in a spacious rectangular room lined with instrument benches and staff duty stations, arrayed on the walls around a raised central dais for the command officers. Viewscreens lined the walls above all the desks, and the forward wall was set with another huge screen. The installations were basic, with no protective pods or shelters, the kind of bridge usually found in a working vessel that never left safe transit routes. In one corner of the room, near the door through which they had entered and opposite the forward viewing screen, they could see an elevator, probably leading directly to the crew’s stasis chambers.

  Most of the desks on the right hand side of the room had been heavily damaged by fire, now extinguished, which had been so intense that it had melted the plastic on some of the chairs and reduced the desks themselves to slag. A body lay under the desk, charred to a black shell by the fire. On the far side of the bridge the control panels were largely physically intact but mostly dead, with only a few small lights flickering on some of them. Above these decks was a narrow hull breach, a gap about three metres long and a hand wide, now filled with auto-sealing foam. A corresponding hole had shattered the giant forward viewscreen, though it had also now been auto-filled with sealant. Another crew member lay dead near the forward hole, and the captain’s body was collapsed over her desk in the central island of desks. Despite the intense fire there was no smell of smoke or dust in the room.

  Dr. Delecta rushed over to the body of the captain while Adam hustled to the hole at the front of the bridge. “Decompression,” she told them all after a cursory examination.

  “Caused by heavy weapons,” Adam confirmed, running his fingers around the edge of the hole. “I’d say an accelerator cannon of some kind. Came in here and out through there.” He pointed to the long rift scored in the wall above the port side control panels. “Bridge door probably sealed immediately, and the bridge decompressed in a couple of seconds with no outside air. Then they died before the seal could stop the decompression.”

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  “But why didn’t the ship’s emergency systems protect them?” Olivia asked. “Shouldn’t it flood with emergency air?” She pointed at the long scar on the port side. “That sealant is automated, it should have blocked the decompression within a few seconds. There’d be no air, but it should repressurize in about five more seconds.”

  “True enough,” Saqr agreed. “Unpleasant, but it shouldn’t be fatal. And,” she pointed to the desks. “Not enough time for the fire to go out.”

  “The radiation surge,” Siladan said, moving over to the fire-damaged desks. “It must have hit just before the cannon. Started the fire here, completely fried the ship’s computer and all its higher systems.” He began investigating the decks as he spoke. “Probably hit this side of the ship for some reason, and all these decks caught fire. The crew member died the same way as our mates down below, radiation burn. Then fell under there and the fire burnt the body. Look!” He pointed at the wall, where a strange circuit board-like pattern of black marks stretched up toward the ceiling. “I think it hit here and set all the cables on this side on fire at once. It must have been like a firestorm in here. Then maybe a minute or so later the cannon bullet hit there, and the decompression stopped the fire spreading.”

  “By consuming all the air,” Olivia said quietly, standing back near the door and contemplating the horror that must have unfolded in the bridge.

  “Curse of the Gambler,” Al Hamra whispered in awe, referencing the Icon usually invoked when witnessing terrible misfortune. “What a horrible way to die. But why? Who would do this? And what would make a big enough flare to take out a ship this size?”

  “Why are there only three crew?” Olivia asked. “Is that normal?”

  “No,” Saqr replied. “But judging from how close we are to the sun, I have an idea.” They all looked at her, and she continued. “I think we were about to enter the Portal to Taoan. We haven’t seen the Zafirah have we? It was meant to go through first, then us twenty minutes later. If someone waited for the destroyer to go through, they’d have twenty minutes to destroy the Ghazali, and most of the flight crew would already be in the stasis chamber.” She pointed to the captain, hanging dead over the rail of the central control desk. “Standard practice before entering the Portal is that the captain and one or two crew do final checks and wait until final approach, then go to the stasis chambers for a rapid cryofreeze. Makes sure that nothing goes wrong until the last minute. Which means that the ship had minimal crew, no Legion escort, and if it gets destroyed the entire rescue mission fails before the Zafirah can come back. I’d guess that with the reactor gone we’re falling into the sun. We’ll enter the danger zone in a few days, and it won’t be possible to rescue anyone.”

  “Unless whoever attacked decides not to wait, and comes back to finish the job before the Zafirah realizes we’re lost and comes back,” Olivia said, nodding at the sense of her theory.

  “Or they ambushed the destroyer on the other side,” Adam suggested. “Split the fleet, make sure the evacuation ship is destroyed and try to take out the military part of the mission separately.”

  “Same ship could do both,” Al Hamra pointed out. “Wait for the Zafirah to go through, hit the Ghazali on its final approach to the Portals, then go through itself, ambush the Zafirah on the other side, come back and finish the job if it survives the battle.”

  “Nobody ambushes a ship using a Portal,” Adam countered. “The entire crew would be in stasis when it came through. Even a crash wake up would take ten, twenty minutes. The Zafirah wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “It would if that ship had some special radiation weapon.” Al Hamra spoke slowly as he considered the evidence before them. “The Zafirah would be waiting for the Ghazali, it might think the attacker had come through from … what’s the other direction from Taoan?” He looked to Saqr, who told him. “Right, they might think the attacker had come through from Uharu. Then it hits them with the radiation weapon, and they’re just floating helpless while it carves them up.”

  “I guess that’s possible,” Adam conceded in a low, gruff voice. “Unlikely, and reckless. But whatever did this radiation attack is unusual. If the weapon worked on a radiation-hardened destroyer like the Zafirah the plan would work.”

  “Right,” Al Hamra said, decision made and authoritative voice back on. “Well, we know this ship was attacked, and whoever did it might be lurking here picking off survivors, or coming back soon. So we should do what we can. Siladan, see if you can get into the system and reactivate things. We need the higher functions of the ship’s computer. Olivia, can you see if you can get the reactor online? Or at least get its status? And Saqr, scout around and see if there’s anything in the controls or comms that’s still working.”

  They set to work, busying themselves about the bridge while Adam took a guard position at the stairwell and Al Hamra backed him up by the door. This was the most important work of data slicing that Siladan had ever taken on, and he worked quickly and diligently at one of the data access ports on the undamaged central control panel, near the dead captain. He could access the ship’s systems easily enough, but they were almost all dead, physically ruined by the radiation surge. After a few minutes, however, he managed to restore some basic functions of the communication system, giving the ship sensor and communications capacity to a few hundred kilometres’ range. This was the standard combat range of most small warships, and often operated from secured sub-systems within the physical structure of starships. Once he had it operational, drawing power from the ship’s emergency systems, he called Al Hamra, who took charge of a communications panel while Siladan continued to try and find other emergency sensor and communications systems and Olivia searched fruitlessly for ways to bring more power online.

  After several minutes of trying, Al Hamra found no one within communication range, except the ship that they had seen drifting off the starboard bow of the Ghazali.

  “Hello … starship Isaac’s Solace. Who … this?” The connection was poor, though which ship’s system was at fault was impossible to say.

  “We are survivors of the Ghazali,” Al Hamra told them. “What is your situation?”

  “ … Blew out the hangar … eighty survivors,” the ship responded, the person speaking either deciding not to identify themselves or the signal lost when they did. “Reactor controls unstable … systems damaged.”

  “I guess the ship was partly protected by the hangar,” Saqr called over from her position just behind Al Hamra at the central command desk, where she was going through a tabula she had found.

  “Do you know what happened?” Al Hamra asked them.

  “No,” was the immediate reply. “Emergency decanting… many dead in … gathered survivors at … hangar … drew lots … injured behind.”

  Al Hamra looked to the others. There was obviously no way they could ask the ship to return to a dock, since it was already full. And by their story, it did not sound like there were any other functioning ships in the hangar. The injured and whoever had not got onto the Isaac’s Solace would be fanning out from the hangar looking for ships still docked externally to the starboard side of the Ghazali, while the surviving members of the Nekatra pack hunted them. He said his farewells to the nameless person on the Isaac’s Solace, wished them all the blessings of the Icons, and put the receiver down, cutting contact with the ship. They all paused their work for a moment to look at each other, but nobody said anything.

  “Olivia,” Al Hamra called out to the engineer as the silence stretched. “Any luck with the reactor?”

  As Al Hamra communicated with the Isaac’s Solace, Siladan had continued searching for anything that might help, and had stumbled on an uncorrupted data store in the emergency response sub-system. He pulled the information onto his tabula and called out to the squad leader, gesturing for him to come over. “I found something,” he told him, and showed him the readouts. “It looks like something came out of the Portal just before the Ghazali was hit and broadcast an emergency message to the Ghazali.” He pointed to the communications logs, where a highly-encrypted and compressed tight-beam communication had reached the Ghazali on a pre-established channel.

  “Is that … ?” Al Hamra asked, and seeing Siladan’s nod, turned his question into a statement, “An emergency transmission from the Zafirah.” He paused. “How is that possible? From beyond the Portal?”

  “It must have sent a small ship of some kind back through the Portal with a warning,” Siladan concluded. “But they were hit before they could decrypt and open it. It’s just sitting in here with a bunch of systems log data.” The log data, he had noted, was also encrypted.

  “Does that tell us what happened?” Al Hamra asked him, pointing to the logs.

  “Partly, probably,” Siladan confirmed. “Maybe energy readings, ship systems records, maybe local sensor data. If we can decrypt it and string it together we can get the timeline for at least some of what happened.”

  “That’s usually done by Consortium Investigators,” Saqr called over. “After an incident.”

  “Okay,” Al Hamra acknowledged. “Siladan, copy it all across to your tabula. Once we’re out of here, we can try and figure it out.”

  Siladan nodded and started the process of copying. As Al Hamra turned to return to the doorway Olivia yelled, “Success!” and sprang back from her seat, clapping her hands with joy, as a small bank of lights blinked to life on the console in front of her. “Emergency power! Reactor status restored!”

  As Al Hamra turned to speak to the engineer the room started flashing red, and a strident alarm rang throughout the room.

  “EMERGENCY!” An electronic voice announced. “EMERGENCY! REACTOR FAILURE IMMINENT! INITIATE EVACUATION PROTOCOL IMMEDIATELY! RED STATUS! REACTOR FAILURE IMMINENT! MINIMUM SAFE DISTANCE 100 KILOMETRES! REACTOR FAILURE IMMINENT! RED STATUS! ONE HOUR TO EXPLOSION!”

  They looked at each other in shock as Olivia’s newly-restored reactor status feed activated all the ship’s emergency systems.

  “REACTOR FAILURE! ONE HOUR TO EXPLOSION!”