“The grav-plates are still charged in both ships,” explained Angelique, checking the air-lines. “And we’re upside-down to them, so the ships are pushing each other away — lucky I managed to get the tether on in time. But at least it means we won’t be floating about the Ibis in zero-g. Come on, get going.”
Ryann took one last hesitant look over the edge and then reached up, grasping the steel cable.
“Well, this is going to be interesting,” he muttered, and took a deep breath before swinging himself out into the void.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE WRECK OF THE IBIS
There was a moment’s strain as he took his weight upon the hawser, before feeling the curious pull back to his ship from its artificial gravity. He hauled himself hand-over-hand, and as he went, he felt his body growing lighter as he left the localised gravity field of the Raven. In a few moments he was practically floating, his body weightless in space. And then, as he neared the larger ship, his body began twisting around as he felt the unfamiliar pull of the Ibis’ gravity-plates. Before he knew what was happening was himself hanging upside down in relation to the Raven.
“How the hell did you get across to the airlock in the first place?” he gasped, steadying himself as he tried to reorient his perspective of what was up and down.
“Buy me a drink some day and I’ll tell you all about it,” he heard Angelique mutter from close behind.
Ryann hauled himself across the last few metres to the edge of the open airlock door and hung from the tether-line exhausted, trying to get his breath back. His head still swam from his near-suffocation, and the extra exertion made the world spin before his eyes.
With a last effort he swung himself forwards, catching hold of a hand rail. After a moment, he managed to get his foot up to the door and pulled himself into the airlock. He lay upon the floor panting, thankful to feel the reassuring pull of gravity once more. He heard Angelique climb up beside him, deftly unclipping her tether and stepping over him.
Ryann looked up, rolling on to his side.
“I feel like I’ve —”
Angelique cut him off with an urgent motion of her hand. He pulled himself up in alarm, instinctively straining his ears for any sound, even though they were still in the silent vacuum of space.
Angelique pressed her hands to the wall of the airlock for a moment, then motioned to Ryann to do the same. He held out his hand, trying to calm his breathing. He thought that he could feel the faintest of vibrations running through the ship, an intermittent throb.
He looked quizzically up towards Angelique.
“Power?” he whispered.
She shrugged, glancing over to the lifeless control panel on the wall.
“Not here at any rate. I don’t like it,” she replied, glancing suspiciously around the airlock. “What do you think did this?” She inspected the outer doors of the airlock. They hung open, the locking-bolts scorched and severed. Deep furrows in the metal suggested some great force had been used to prise them open.
She crept over to the far end of the airlock; the meagre light from the distant Viridis sun couldn’t penetrate the shadows and Ryann held his breath as she was swallowed up in the gloom.
He jumped as a stark beam of a light cut through the darkness as Angelique pulled a flashlight from an open emergency panel.
“Here, there’s another one,” she said quietly, pulling another light from the locker, all the while gazing around. “Inner airlock doors are open but look intact.” She pointed her flashlight out into the corridor beyond, stepping through cautiously. “Help me get them closed, then we might be able to restore the atmosphere.”
“Give me a second,” muttered Ryann, fumbling with the tether-line. He turned and took a long look back to the dark silhouette of the Raven hanging silently in space. From this angle, looking at the underside of the ship, she didn’t look in too bad condition, he thought to himself.
“Ryann.”
He stepped through into the dark corridor, and together they turned the wheel of the manual override and slowly the airlock doors slid closed.
They looked around: it was pitch black now that the airlock doors were sealed. The corridor appeared much the same as any other rust-laden freighter they had ever been aboard, but out here, drifting in the eerie stillness of space the shadows felt heavy with a brooding menace. The walls and ceiling were a mass of pipes and cable-runs, all covered with a thin layer of ice crystals. The beams of their flashlights only served to deepen the shadows, tricking their eyes into seeing movement in the darkness.
They found themselves at a main intersection, with corridors running off left, right and straight ahead. A flight of steps led to the levels above and below. Peering down the corridors, they could see that all the bulkhead hatches hung open, and upon further inspection, they discovered scorch-marks on the walls and floor where the locks had been cut.
“This doesn’t look good,” whispered Angelique, directing the beam of her flashlight down into the depths of the stairwell. “Looks as though something like a squad of marines has run through this place. Maybe we’ve bitten off more than we can chew?”
“What choice do we have?” murmured Ryan inspecting the blast marks upon the hatches. “It sure does look like someone took an arc-cutter to these doors — but it couldn’t have been anyone coming aboard from that Patroller — that’s just a single-seat flyer — it would have taken a team to cut all these doors. Perhaps they were already cut? Before the ship took off from New Eden?”
“You thinking that somebody jacked the Ibis — broke in and got her running?” asked Angelique.
“Maybe — trying to escape from New Eden for some reason. Then the Patroller
