It was obvious that most of them had been cut down whilst trying to run, caught out in the open corridors. But a couple of the bodies were more distressing: curled-up cadavers lodged in makeshift hiding places, unable in the end to evade their mystery attacker.
“Who the hell could have done this?” croaked Angelique as they surveyed their latest macabre find. They were staring in horror through the open hatch into the bridge of the Ibis.
One crew member lay sprawled out in the doorway, a rifle and several empty magazines littering the floor around her mutilated corpse. The other body sat upright in the captain’s chair, his lifeless hands still resting upon the controls, as though he had been trying to get the ship’s systems back online right up until the very end. A scorched trail cut through the back of his chair and out of the other side, cleaving the victim’s body in two.
“Whoever it was that did this, they’re not here now, thankfully,” muttered Ryann, inspecting the figure in the captain’s chair.
“We don’t know that,” whispered Angelique, staring out through the panoramic glass that took up the entirety of the forward wall of the bridge. The shifting mass of the Halion Belt glowed green and blue beyond, flashes of lightning briefly illuminating its depths. The nebula seemed tantalisingly close, and yet at the same time desperately out of reach; the promise of safety in New Eden seemed a long way away from the claustrophobic corridors of this silent and brooding ship.
She looked away and out into the darkness where the distant shapes of the hulks from the wreck-field glinted dully.
“Hey, I don’t see any sign of that Luminal battleship,” she said at last.
“Well, that’s one piece of good news at least,” replied Ryann, still examining the remains of the pilot. He brushed away the frost from the name-tag on his flight-suit.
“Look, it’s Xavier Shaw!” he said in surprise.
“Commander of New Eden?” asked Angelique, walking over to the captain’s station. “What’s he doing out here, piloting a miner’s colony ship?”
“I thought I recognised some of the flight-suits on those bodies we’ve come across,” sighed Ryann. “I think they were some of the people in charge of the administration of New Eden.”
“So, if they’re all here, who’s running New Eden now?”
Ryann didn’t reply, he just stared out of the window towards the Halion Belt.
“Have a look around, see if you can get any of the Ibis’ systems back online — just the basics, we don’t want to attract another Luminal ship.” He turned back to the captain’s station as though he had come to a decision and pulled the corpse roughly out of the seat. It slid to the floor, the two pieces landing heavily.
“Ryann!” exclaimed Angelique, glancing around in panic, but he was already seating himself at the console, flicking through the blank controls.
“Engineering station is over there,” he muttered, pointing behind him without looking round. “Let’s see if we can at least restore the atmosphere.”
Angelique went to protest, glancing back to the grisly remains just inside the doorway. She gave a long sigh, and then turned, making her way towards the rear of the bridge, treading cautiously between the high banks of equipment. The green glow of the Halion Belt only gave a faint illumination, and it was much darker away from the window; the shadows seemed ominous and impenetrable.
Emergency flight helmets were positioned at the back of each crewman’s station, giving the impression of silent sentinels, staring out through their blank visors. Two more hatchways at the rear of the bridge were just black rectangles, and she skirted fearfully past them, her heart in her mouth.
As she reached the First Engineer’s station she noticed a couple of lights blinking upon a panel in the ghostly stillness.
“That’s odd,” she muttered to herself, sitting down in the flight chair and scrutinising the readouts.
“What have you got?” she heard Ryann’s voice in her earpiece.
“Everything’s offline, but there is emergency power available,” muttered Angelique, flicking through the systems. A bank of monitor screens sprang into life, casting her face in an eerie red glow. “But everything except one power distributor is off, and that’s running on practically zero — it’s barely registering.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“Well, it looks like someone’s routed an auxiliary line from the emergency array down into the cargo hold — if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it was for a life-support feed.”
She heard Ryann approaching through the shadows.
“What makes you say that?” he asked when he reached her, peering over her shoulder at the display.
“Well look,” she replied, flicking through the screens. “This is the manifest for the cargo hold, mostly mining equipment: drilling-rigs, ore trucks. But here, there’s this.”
“Prospector Hazardous Environment Vehicle,” read Ryann.
“Mining exploration vehicle — pressurised, self-contained. Run an extra power feed into it and you could survive for months if you had a few food supplies.”
“A survivor?” asked Ryann.
Angelique turned and looked up at him in concern, her face gaunt in the stark light.
“Or our killer,” she said gravely.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CONFRONTING A KILLER
“There it is, over by that ore-hopper,” whispered Angelique, pointing off into the depths of the cargo hold. Even though they had power to the ship now, the meagre spotlights on the walls only served to deepen the shadows.
They had managed to restore emergency power to nearly all levels, and with that a breathable atmosphere. Where all had been deathly silent in the vacuum, now the ship creaked and groaned. The sound of the air blowing mournfully through the ventilation ducts set their nerves on edge.
Now that they were down in the engineering levels, the environment was much more cramped and difficult to navigate. The corridors were low and claustrophobic, a densely-packed maze of pipes and machinery. And although the cargo hold was a large space, it was crammed so tightly with vehicles and equipment it still felt oppressive and foreboding.
There were perhaps twenty vehicles, from large dumper-trucks
