“Come on Ryann, we’ve still got a long way to go.”
Eve’s voice shook him from his reverie, and he took a deep breath, willing his aching limbs on, following Eve up towards the control tower.
At some point on that never-ending journey up the side of the hangar shaft, Ryann collapsed in a heap upon one of the walkways.
“Phew, I’m beat! I think the ship’s gravity plates must have been knocked out of alignment or something — feels like my body’s made of lead!”
He gazed wearily up into the heights; by the looks of it they still had around ten levels to traverse before they reached the foot of the control tower. Eve had already begun to climb the next ladder, but she stepped back down upon seeing the state that he was in.
“I don’t feel it,” she muttered, sitting down beside him. And true enough, she barely looked out of breath. “How are your tanks looking? If you’re feeling like that, it could be that your mix is messed up.”
Ryann pulled himself heavily into a sitting position, breathing hard. He ran through the diagnostics on the wrist panel of his flight-suit. After a moment he hit it in frustration, letting his head fall back against the wall in fatigue.
“I think you might be right,” he gasped. “But I can’t check for sure — all the electrics are fried. It might have been from when that drone grabbed me. I’ve been feeling a bit weird ever since.”
“You’re just lucky she hadn’t managed to move fully into form before you got free,” murmured Eve, and her face fell, as though she were reliving her own private horrors.
“Well I wouldn’t like to go through anything worse than that,” sighed Ryann. “It was weird. When she grabbed me, it was like she was pulling at something inside me — I felt as though I was being torn out of my body. I, I can’t describe it, but I don’t ever want to feel it again.”
“We better keep moving then,” replied Eve with a grim smile.
“It looks melted where she touched me,” murmured Ryann, inspecting the arm of his flight suit. “I think there might be a leak or something, but I can’t tell without the diagnostics. I can’t see any tears in the outer layers though.”
Eve moved closer, studying the damage.
“I think you’ve probably got an internal leak looking at how the suit material has been fused,” she said in concern. “I’ve seen it before on some of the newer Atlas suits — a coolant pipe from the EVA thruster system ruptures through the flight-suit inner — starts leaking into the suit lining. Takes a while to build up to a hazardous level.”
“The Atlas suits?” asked Ryann in surprise. “I haven’t seen one of those since when I was a kid. I remember my dad used to wear them.”
Eve looked taken aback, quickly shaking her head with a smile.
“Yeah, I told you, that old rust-bucket ship we were on was practically an antique. Anyway, we need to get you out of that suit before hypoxia sets in.”
Ryann looked up towards the control tower with a grimace.
“Better get a move on then,” he muttered, pulling himself up to his feet. He swayed as a wave of nausea washed over him, and he grabbed hold of the handrail. The walkway was perhaps a hundred metres above the hangar floor, and he had a moment of dizziness as he stared down over the railing.
“Are you sure you can make it?” asked Eve in concern, stepping forward. Ryann nodded, waving her on.
“You set off, I’ll follow on as best I can,” he gasped. “Go on.”
But Eve remained where she was.
“I don’t think I should leave you,” she said softly. “ I don’t want to.”
“I’ll only slow you down,” he replied with a weary smile. “But don’t worry, I’m okay.”
With a last, mistrustful look, Eve nodded, then turned back to the ladder, setting off into its darkened heights.
Ryann went to follow her, then stopped dead as the faintest sound of movement echoed along a darkened corridor that led off from the walkway.
He looked desperately to the ladder, but there was no time. A harsh light burst out of the darkness as a hatchway way flew open at the end of the corridor with a deep boom. And then, silhouetted in the doorway were the shapes of six figures. Ryann didn’t even have time to reach for his gun before the group was marching forwards, each with a rifle aimed directly at him. He glanced up into the shadows to where Eve was halfway up the ladder. She went to climb back down to join him, but Ryann gave her a subtle shake of his head as he raised his arms in surrender.
As the figures approached, his heart sank; he could see that they weren’t the same ill-formed drones he had so far encountered. Each of them was dressed in a suit of military-spec powered armour. Even if he could get a shot off at one of them, there was little chance it would penetrate those thick plates of ceramic-polymer. There seemed no chance of escape.
As the group came closer he called out hopelessly, “Don’t shoot! I surrender!”
The figures came to a halt a couple of metres away
