heard a series of rapid staccato thumps. At the same instant he glanced over his left shoulder – in time to witness the main entrance of the building explode inwards in a shower of glass.
Kendrick fell to the marbled floor, covering his head with his hands as the windows nearby shattered almost at the same instant. He half-crawled, half-scuttled towards the relative safety of an expanse of wall that separated one large glass panel from the next. There he pressed himself flat against the floor while bullets whined through the air above him. They made a dull thudding sound as they impacted with the inner walls opposite the windows.
Peering down, Kendrick saw a fine tracery of nanite threads rapidly spreading across the marbled tiles under him. The tingling in his hands became urgent, almost unbearable. He longed to scratch his palms, to-
In an instant he understood what was required of him. Rolling slightly onto his side, he started to pull a glove off. Throwing it to one side, he gazed down at the palm of his uncovered left hand, noticing the faintest pattern of gold still etched into his flesh.
Only a few days before, he had witnessed all-out war raging at the molecular level, deep underground. Perhaps this time things would be different.
Kendrick spread his fingers out wide and laid his bared palm flat against the tiles beneath him. He screamed as his flesh united with the cool stone. Searing pain shot into his brain while bullets continued to zip through the air just inches above his head.
He could hear people shouting, and yet more screaming.
Through a haze of agony he became aware of the corpse lying several feet away from him, its head and shoulders reduced to a crimson pulp. He still couldn't prise his hand away from the tiles, so he twisted his head around, trying to see what was happening behind him. Most of the other Labrats, he saw, had retreated to the relative shelter of the pressure chamber.
The walls of the gallery were constructed from alternate panels of glass and columns of concrete: perhaps twenty Labrats had managed to find shelter behind the safety of the concrete. At least a dozen more lay scattered in the stillness of death.
Kendrick gripped his wrist, still trying to pull his hand free. He felt a fresh stab of icy pain as the skin of his palm ripped. While he watched, golden threads crawled out from under the flesh, seeking out the nearest silver filaments. The silver turned to gold within moments.
He finally realized that the firing outside had stopped. 'It's me – Kendrick!' he screamed into the sudden silence. 'Can anyone hear me?'
'Ken!' It was Buddy. 'I thought you were down!'
'Those things are gun turrets,' Kendrick yelled. 'The same as back in the Maze.'
'Stay tight, Ken. We did notice that.'
Kendrick twisted his head around enough to catch sight of Buddy crouching low behind a long concrete bench near the centre of the gallery.
He managed to work his hand free at last, leaving a disturbing amount of blood and skin on the tiles. Keeping his injured hand cradled, he worked his way to the edge of a wall column and peeked around it.
He saw a sliver of grassland, then spotted something shiny and man-made visible to one side of a tree ten or twelve metres away, deliberately positioned so that it covered as much of that side of the building as possible. He slowly pulled his head back again.
They had to do something now. Draeger was still somewhere out there.
Moving very slowly again, Kendrick shifted closer to where the window had been, and lifted his head.
'Hey!' a voice yelled. 'Hey, stay back!'
He saw Veliz peeking out from the door leading into the pressure chamber. One of the turrets whirred and Veliz dodged back out of range. Another volley of bullets spat into the building's interior.
Draeger could be downloading reams of lethal information and transmitting it back down to Earth while they were trapped here. Or else erasing the proof of his guilt for ever.
Kendrick allowed himself no more time to think. He stood and ran out through the shattered window, still cradling his injured left hand against his chest. He headed towards a copse only a few metres distant. His movements were restricted by the suit he was wearing, making him feel clumsy and slow.
The turret whined again and dirt was kicked up in tiny spurts, tracking after Kendrick as he threw himself into the shelter of the trees. Bullets ripped through the branches above him. He shielded his head as leaves and twigs rained down.
The gun whined into silence as its target disappeared from its sensors.
'Kendrick! Are you there?' Buddy again.
'I'm okay,' Kendrick shouted back. 'I'm outside here. There's a turret just ahead of me.'
He heard a muted argument from somewhere inside the building. 'Stay where you are,' Buddy yelled back.
Then came the sounds of running feet and more bullets whining and ricocheting. Glancing back quickly towards the shattered window through which he'd exited, Kendrick saw Buddy take cover in the same place he himself had. Buddy gave him a one-handed thumbs-up before ducking back out of sight.
The reality of what he had just done began to hit Kendrick with the force of shock. He could very easily have died. He rolled onto his back and gazed up through the copse's branches.
Buddy called out to him again. 'Kendrick, I'm throwing something over.'
A small brick-like object landed not too far away, compact enough to fit into the palm of Kendrick's uninjured right hand. The turret whined briefly in response, spitting a few bullets into the air near where the object had landed. Kendrick reached out for it with tentative fingers, ready to snatch them back behind his cover, but the turret didn't respond this time. He picked the object up and recognized it as one of the grenades that Sabak had taken on board the shuttle.
'Do you think you can hit that thing from where you are now?' Buddy yelled.
'I can try – but do we have any more of these if I miss?'
A pause. 'Just try and get it first time, okay?'
Great. 'How does it work?'
'Touch the screen. Press where it says 'arming'. Got that?'
'Got it.'
'When you're ready to throw, press down hard on the plastic button on the reverse side, and then for God's sake just throw the damn thing. You'll have maybe seven seconds before it detonates.'
Kendrick nodded. Then he dragged a branch from the soil and tossed it high into the open air. The turret whined, and the chunk of bullet-splintered wood jerked in the air before hitting the ground.
'Listen,' said Buddy. 'I'm going to draw its fire, then you throw. You got me?'
'I don't know if that's such a good idea. That thing's got a much faster response rate than-'
Buddy moved in an augmented blur, heading for another tree several metres away from where Kendrick sheltered. The turret whirred in response, tracking Buddy's path with fire as he ran.
Damn. Again there was no time to think. Kendrick pressed down on the grenade's activator and stepped out from behind his own tree, hurling the device as hard as he could in the direction of the turret.
As he'd stood he'd glimpsed Buddy diving towards the meagre shelter of another tree. None of the trees on board the station could possibly be more than nine or ten years old but they were already tall and gnarled, with thick trunks. It occurred to him that they'd have been altered genetically to grow much faster than nature intended. They also, he dimly recalled from some documentary, served a vital function in the station's complex artificial ecology.
Far more importantly, they at least provided more shelter than natural-grown saplings.
Buddy dropped down out of sight again and the turret rapidly swung back towards Kendrick. The grenade had landed just a foot from its base.
Kendrick threw himself back behind the tree and stumbled. As he started to pull himself up, he realized that he was still in the turret's line of sight.
He could see the turret zeroing in on him. Desperately, he reached behind himself for the knapsack in which he had stored his helmet. As he flung it away from him the turret's sensors picked up the sudden movement. Kendrick caught a glimpse of the knapsack dancing in the air, giving him the opportunity to slide rapidly back behind the tree.
