Clare was in the commander’s seat in the shuttlecraft, trying to raise Abrams on her comlink, when the main power in the mine came back on. Across the silo in the control room, she saw Wilson look around in surprise. He looked down at the console, then back up at Clare, concern written on his face.
‘Uh-oh,’ she said softly to herself.
Wilson’s voice came over her headset.
‘Captain, I think you’d better take a look at this.’
Clare sensed that something was terribly wrong. She tore off her headset and ran out of the cabin, along the docking corridor, and back round to the control room.
Wilson swivelled in his seat, and pointed at a display that had started up. They appeared to be showing warnings of some kind.
‘I don’t like the look of this,’ he said. ‘The reactor’s just started up, but the power levels are climbing out of control.’
Clare leaned closer, and her mouth fell open as she saw the warning messages.
‘I think we’d better try to get hold of—’
She didn’t get any further. Her words were lost behind a klaxon that blared out in the control room, followed by the strident warning: ‘
Trained to act instantly at the sound of such a warning, both of them dived for the emergency close button, which would slam the pressure doors shut and isolate the silo from the rest of the mine.
‘They’re not responding!’ Wilson yelled, above the rising roar of air in the passage outside. The security camera confirmed the truth; the pressure doors at the entrance to the silo complex remained stubbornly open, no matter how many times he hit the emergency button.
The full force of the escaping atmosphere reached them a moment later; a tornado of air tore round the silo complex, scattering debris and dust into the air. Clare and Wilson dived for cover, grabbing the heavy leg supports of the control console to stop themselves from being sucked out and into the passage.
Outside, in the rest of the mine, a huge river of air coursed up and out of the mine, swirling along the empty passages, emptying out into space through the opening hangar doors.
Suddenly, a sound like a crack of thunder exploded in the passage outside, and a long, low rumble shook the complex. On the security camera displays, the view of the open pressure doors vanished behind a grey curtain. The rush of air faded, and a dense cloud of grey dust erupted into the control room, covering Clare and Wilson where they sheltered under the console.
A faint pattering of falling debris faded, and Clare looked up in amazement. The mine had vented, but incredibly they were still alive; what had happened?
Wilson stood up and blew dust off the monitors, and whistled. ‘Shit. The passage collapsed, look.’ He pointed to where, a few moments before, a view of the main airway had stretched off into the distance. Now, all that remained was a vast pile of broken rock where the roof fall had been. The roof had collapsed completely, sealing the passage.
‘What’s the O2 partial pressure?’ Clare demanded as she stood up. It could already be too low to sustain them, and they could black out without warning.
‘Uhh, it’s just above the red line – point one six bar.’
Just enough to survive on, Clare thought. She tried to piece together what had happened, and crossed to the display that had been showing warnings before the mine breached. To her horror, she watched as the air pressure outside the silo continued to fall; in moments, there would be nothing left. The huge mine was emptying completely; every scrap of air exhausting through the open hangar doors, and the open pressure doors throughout the mine.
So this was how they did it, she thought, this was how the Company had killed all the—
Her eyes flew wide.
She grabbed her comlink, and pressed the emergency broadcast key.
‘Crawford, Bergman – please respond. Abrams, Elliott, if you can hear me, respond. If anyone can hear this message, please respond!’ Clare’s face contorted into a mask of despair, as she realised all of them were out there, in the mine, in the emptiness and the quiet.
She repeated the message again after a few seconds, but her voice had faded to a whisper. She could feel her legs giving way, and she backed up against the wall and slid down to the floor, the comlink falling from her shaking fingers.
‘I should have trusted him,’ she said to herself. ‘Why didn’t I listen to him, when he warned me? And now he’s – he’s dead, and all the others. Oh, Matt, why didn’t I trust you …’ her voice tailed off, and she turned to face Wilson, her face stricken.
‘I don’t understand – what’s happened?’ Wilson’s eyes frantically searched her face.
She didn’t answer at first; she just looked at him, shaking her head. After a few moments, she spoke again, her voice unsteady.
‘The Company did it, when the mine stopped making money. It wasn’t profitable any more, so they just – opened the main doors and let the air out.’
She took a gulping breath.
‘They opened all the doors in the mine, to kill everyone they could, and sent the robots to finish off the survivors. That’s why they didn’t want anyone coming back here. We were never meant to have got this far, we were meant to have been – to have been killed in the crash.’
Wilson was shaking his head in disbelief as he listened. His eyes were wide with fright.
‘And Helligan, and Helligan – he gave us the commands – and Matt tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t – I wouldn’t – fucking –
‘I don’t believe it. They couldn’t – why would they kill all those people, they could just have—’
‘Because it saved them
Wilson’s face was aghast as Clare’s words sank in. The open hangar doors, the gun battle in the control centre, the smashed radios, the sabotage to the ship, and finally this last, desperate attempt to kill them all. She was right; it all fit together, like a bloodstained jigsaw.
‘No,’ he said, but it was just a whisper.
Clare nodded vigorously, her eyes squeezed shut, but she couldn’t stop the hot tears that welled up.
Wilson looked at his captain, unsure what to say or do, as the sobs took her, and the tears started to roll down her dust-streaked face.
Deep in the mine, Matt and Bergman ran along the 400 level, back towards the shaft station at the bottom of the main intake shaft. To Matt, it felt like he was running in the slow motion of a nightmare, trying to get back up to the control centre.
The main lighting in the passage came on suddenly, dazzlingly bright after the long darkness of the mine.
Unable to see for a moment, Matt tripped and sprawled headlong in the dust of the passage. Bergman stopped and helped Matt up, squinting against the harsh white light.
‘Main power. That means the reactor’s coming up.’ Bergman’s voice showed his concern. ‘What do you think it’s been programmed to do?’
‘I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out. Come on, we’ve got to stop them.’
They started running down the passage again, past the dead mining robot, and through the pressure doors. The haulage way stretched away in front of them, almost a kilometre to go before the shaft station.
They were about halfway to the next pressure door, when the lighting in the passage dimmed.
‘Oh, shit, what’s that?’ Matt gasped.
A moment later, a string of red warning lights in the passage came on, each beacon a spinning fan of red rays, receding into the distance. The unmistakable sound of a pressure alarm klaxon echoed down the passage, and both men skidded to a halt.
‘The hangar doors. They’re opening the hangar doors!’ yelled Matt, his eyes wide, ‘We’ve got to get behind a pressure door!’
