Kandara considered that. ‘Have any new quint come on board since we arrived here?’
‘No. The Salvation of Life is self-sufficient. Its systems simply grow new quint bodies whenever one ages out.’
‘So every quint on board was part of the Olyix’s Earth crusade. Mother Mary, I’ll bet Odd Quint was part of their saboteur teams, and now it’s got sort of their version of PTSD. It picked up some bad habits back on Earth, like secrecy and human-style greed, maybe a dash of our paranoia.’
‘Are you saying Odd Quint is Feriton?’ Yuri asked sharply.
‘Oh, bloody hell, yes,’ Callum said. ‘His mission for Connexion had him sneaking around the Salvation of Life just like this. He could be reliving it.’
‘That’s a bit of a stretch,’ Kandara said. ‘There were hundreds – thousands – of Olyix infiltrating us for decades. It could be any of them.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Alik said. ‘We’re aware of the problem, that’s all that counts. If Odd Quint gets in the way, we kill it. If it doesn’t get in the way, we take out the membrane, and it’ll get blown out into vacuum. Either way, we don’t go looking for it. We keep our objective as simple as possible.’
Kandara knew he was right, but it didn’t make her feel any easier about having a quint lurking around somewhere.
The creeperdrones moved into the hangar and spread out. She paused again, ten metres back from the hangar. Images from the creeperdrones and the sensor clumps on the ceiling showed her the familiar scene of a deserted hangar.
Pistol drawn, peripherals armed, she walked up to the entrance. Everything she saw confirmed what the feed was showing her. ‘Area clear,’ she told the others.
Training took over, and she slipped around the rim, pistol in a double hand grip, tracking between potential threat points – and ending up aimed at the tunnel mouth where Odd Quint had last been seen. Target graphics splashed into her tarsus lens, locking onto hypothetical hostile locations. She could feel the peripherals in her arms poking at the jacket fabric, ready to fire in an instant.
The four transmitter drones were hovering over by the wide hangar entrance. She could see the slight static haze in the air of the membrane where the pipe trunks thinned out around the start of a two-hundred-metre passage of naked rock that angled down to the enclave. The shifting glow of the nebula beyond was just visible, casting wavering pastel streaks on the rock walls.
Ignoring the drones, she hurried across the floor to the tunnel where Odd Quint had gone. The others followed her out.
‘Alik,’ she said, ‘I could do with some cover here.’
‘I got you.’
While Callum, Yuri and Jessika ran towards the membrane-covered entrance, Alik sprinted after her. She stopped two metres short of the tunnel and flattened herself against the wall. Alik pressed himself into the weave of pipe trunks behind her.
‘The creeperdrone still can’t see any activity in there,’ she said.
‘Good. Listen, we need to secure ourselves to something solid, ready for when they kill the power to the membrane. Gonna be worse than a Kansas twister in here when decompression hits.’
‘Yeah.’ She studied the tunnel entrance, which didn’t seem to have any machinery even close to it, just more pipe trunks leading back into the gloom. ‘They’ve got to have some kind of emergency air lock door, right?’
‘I guess. We would.’
‘Yeah? So I can’t see anything that looks like a door.’
‘Maybe something fancy inside the trunks? It’ll just pop out.’
‘Mary, I don’t know. Hey, Jessika?’
‘Yes?’
‘Have they got emergency pressure doors in here?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Shit.’
‘They must have,’ Callum said. ‘Why would they not?’
‘Riiight. Have you found the generator power leads yet?’
‘No! Give us a bloody chance. Christ!’
Kandara zoomed her helmet opticals in on the other three, who were scuttling about near the membrane, waving sensors over the sinuous pipe trunks wrapped around the big entrance. She cursed silently. It put them in line of sight of the tunnel she was guarding. If Odd Quint was in there, it would have a clean shot at them.
She took a slim harness cable from her belt and passed it around a thick pipe trunk. She pulled hard; it held. It’d probably take her weight, she decided.
‘Got one,’ Yuri said. ‘Organic conductor cable. Looks like a thick green vine, see? It leads to this unit here.’
‘I’ll check the other side,’ Callum said.
‘They’ll have a backup cable,’ Jessika said. ‘Probably more than one.’
‘And a backup membrane generator, too,’ Callum said. ‘Stands to reason. I would.’
Kandara wanted to shout at them to hurry. Get a grip. They know what they’re doing.
All across the hangar ceiling, the slim lighting strands began to get brighter. A lot brighter. Her suit helmet had to apply filters to block the glare.
‘Oh, Mother Mary!’ She brought the pistol up to cover the tunnel opening, squeezing so tight it was a miracle the grip didn’t shatter. Apertures along her jacket sleeves opened. The light was just as intense in the infrared spectrum, producing a uniform brilliance that jammed her sensors. Not a coincidence. ‘They’re coming!’
She concentrated hard on the feed from the creeperdrone sensors. The tunnel illumination was as bright as the hangar, but there was no movement in there.
‘Alik.’
‘What?’
‘Kill the nexus.’
‘What?’
‘The neuralstratum nexus. Kill it. Now! We have to stop the onemind seeing what’s going on in here.’
Her tactical monitor routines detected movement in the hangar behind Alik. She spun around, crouching –
Gox Quint
Salvation of Life
I observed through the neuralstratum as the four little flying machines swooped across the hangar and struck the entrance membrane, stopping them in mid-air. With my gentle misdirection diverting the local nexus, the extraordinary sight didn’t reach the onemind. Even if it had, I
