Stryger lead them down the corridor to a sealed door on their left. There, he stepped to one side and deactivated the lock. Gilliam marched in with his gun drawn. The small man looked around and then called back-

"CLEAR!"

"Inside," Stryger ordered. Ethan and Shaw followed Richards into the control room.

The chamber was a sharp contrast to the dreary metal of the hallways. The wall directly across from the door was transparent, revealing a perfect view of the reddish orange landscape outside. There were shapes in the distance... collapsed husks of buildings that hadn't weathered the years nearly as well as the one they occupied. Computer screens and control equipment covered the wall to the right. All of the monitors were dark, and the two uncomfortable chairs parked in front of them were empty. The wall to the left was taken up by an enclosed lab station and a circular metal platform which could be lowered through the floor. Between the two opposing walls, in front of the massive window, were three long tables and two couches. There were almost no shadows in the room. Glaring overhead lights and polished white walls beamed illumination into every corner.

The monitors blinked to life as Stryger approached them. Tandem, who had been bringing up the rear, joined him as he studied the graphs, charts, images, and lines of text that appeared on the screens.

Gilliam sealed the room's only door as soon as they entered, then took up position beside it... the only spot in the room where he could see everything in it as well as get the full view from the window. He watched it all with his gun held ready.

"So what's the problem with the air?" Richard's said impatiently. He paced the length of the room's window, not bothering to look out of it. His eyes wandered from Stryger to captain Shaw and back again in a continuous cycle, like a dog waiting its master's permission to attack. "When can I get out of this stupid suit."

"As I suspected, the air is breathable but stagnant," Stryger answered. He went from one screen to another, lines in his face deepening at each stop.

Tandem peered over his shoulder.

"Damn the air; where IS everybody?" Gilliam asked.

"No life signs inside the upper facility. The lower level is shielded; it will need to be searched. Tandem."

Stryger turned to his silent shadow. He didn't speak. Neither did she.

Tandem nodded and went to the circular platform. When she stood in the center of it, Stryger hit a switch and the platform... actually the top of a large piston... sank into the floor, taking Tandem into the chamber below. A plate slid into place to cover the hole once she was gone.

Stryger turned his attention to Richards.

"I want a full inspection of the ship. Search it completely, then activate and test all systems. Make sure nothing has been tampered with. Go."

"But-" Richards started to object, but decided otherwise. He left quickly, and Stryger returned to the monitors.

"Gilliam..."

"Aye?"

"You are going to take Mr. Forge to the main ventilation access, where he is going to inspect and repair the air circulation unit. It is not functioning; I want to know why, and then I want it fixed"

"Then go do it yourself," Ethan protested. "because I'm not-"

Stryger pointed his mini-blaster at Shaw.

"Right," Ethan said. "You can drop the act; I know you're not going to shoot her. You need her."

"Do I?" said Stryger. He pulled the trigger.

The pellet of plasma struck Shaw in her right shoulder, sending her in a screaming pirouette that ended with her bouncing off of a table and dropping to the floor.

"SHAW!" Ethan started toward her, but Gilliam was in motion before he took his first step. The small man did not attack or even touch him... he merely stepped into view and aimed his much larger, much deadlier weapon at Shaw.

That was enough.

Shaw rolled onto her back, revealing a charred circle three inches in diameter where her arm joined her torso. The center of the burn was charred completely black; whips of smoke still rose from the sizzling flesh. Instinctively, Shaw clutched at the wound... an act which filled the room with a single shriek of agony.

"A low energy charge, at low velocity," Stryger said with malicious calm. "The projectile lodges in the flesh, where it continues to burn for up to a minute. Now, Mr. Forge... do I still need your captain?"

"She... she's a pilot!" Ethan shouted. "You need-"

"I needed a pilot when there was a ship to fly. Now I need an air circulation unit repaired. I don't think captain Shaw can help me with that. But you can."

Stryger raised his weapon again, this time aiming it at Shaw's stomach.

"You'll kill us both anyway!"

"If I am careful enough, I can put five more rounds into the good captain without killing her outright. And I am a very good shot."

"Aye, he is," added Gilliam.

"...Ethan..." Shaw gasped.

"A shot to the stomach would be... excruciating. Eventually fatal, but not for a very long time."

Her wound had stopped sizzling, but her face was pale. Her breaths were quick and shallow. She was trying not to cry... trying not to scream.

"HELP her for God's sake! She'll die of shock!"

"Shock?" Stryger flashed another one of his serpentine smiles. "Yes... she does look rather surprised, doesn't she. Assist in the repairs and the contents of the station medical kit are at her disposal. She may be particularly interested in the local anesthetics."

"OKAY! I'll do it."

"Then you'd better get started." Stryger lowered his weapon and turned back to the monitors. "Gilliam, make sure he behaves."

"Aye."

Ethan left the control room with Gilliam right behind him. The door sealed itself automatically when they were gone.

---

The facility's main building was an elongated rectangle serviced by two parallel corridors... one at ground level, and one below it, where the actual mining took place. The control room spanned both levels, dividing it into four wings. Corridor 1-1 lead back to the outer airlock, while 1-2 ran deeper into the facility, ending at an inner airlock that connected the main building with the adjacent hangar.

Kyle Richards had retraced half of their earlier route, but stopped just short of halfway. He stepped into an alcove lined with metal cabinets. Fading white letters painted overhead read "Equipment Storage."

He opened the first cabinet. Shelves intended originally for tools and emergency supplies... and then later for weapons... were now empty.

He opened the remaining cabinets, then clicked the comm switch on his helmet.

"Stryger, this is Richards."

"What is it?" Stryger answered over the helmet's earpiece.

"I stopped to arm myself, but the weapons cache in 1-1 is empty."

Richards leaned out... exposing his position to anyone bothering to look... and stared own the empty corridor as he waited for a response. When one wasn't immediate, he added-

"Did you hear m-"

"I did not dispatch you to inspect the weapons cache, Mr. Richards. I need to know the condition of my ship."

"But I need a weapon."

"The sooner you get to the ship, the sooner you can retrieve one of the onboard weapons."

"But what if-"

"Go NOW, Mr. Richards."

"Understood."

Richards inspected the shadowy corridor once again, then started toward the airlock.

---

Gilliam and Ethan were headed the opposite direction

"Gilliam." Stryger's voice spoke softly into Gilliam's ear.

"Aye?" Gilliam brought them to a halt in the middle of the dark hallway. "Go ahead?"

"Please visit weapons cache 1-2," Stryger ordered. "We have further complications."

"Aye? What kind a complications?"

"Richards stopped to arm himself and found that he could not."

"Empty?"

"Indeed."

"Permission to use the hostage as a human shield if I run into trouble?"

"Check the weapons, Gilliam."

"Aye." Gilliam waved Ethan onward.

"What's wrong now?" said Ethan.

"Nothing you need to be concerned with just yet. But if I was to throw you into any oncoming fire we might encounter, do be kind enough to take more than one hit before ya drop."

"So what happened to your people? They run off?"

"I doubt that."

"What then?"

Gilliam pointed to an alcove marked "Equipment Storage." The overhead light was out. Ethan could still see the cabinets, but couldn't read the code that Gilliam punched into the lock. He pulled the metal door open, then closed it and unlocked the one next to it.

"Empty," Ethan announced. "Lemme guess... weapons, right? Only where the hell are they?"

"Not your concern." Gilliam tapped the switch on his helmet. "Stryger, this one's empty, too. I don't like this!"

"Nor do I."

"So now what?"

"Our next course of action will be determined by what Richards finds on the ship."

"If it flies..."

"We proceed as planned."

"Is that smart? If we've been compromised-"

"If the facility had been compromised there would be bodies on the floor and plasma burns on the walls."

"Not if they cleaned it up."

"For what purpose?"

"You're the one with the brain, you tell ME, eh?"

"Oversee the repairs, Gilliam. I'm sure there will be something to shoot soon enough."

"Aye. There always is, with you."

Gilliam stepped out of the alcove and started down the hallway with Ethan ahead of him.

"So what's YOU'RE purpose here?" said Ethan. "Richards is the pilot. Stryger is the brain. Who are you... the guy who blows things up?"

"No, that's still Stryger. I'M the fella that shoots people like you in the back. And the front."

"People like me?" Ethan slowed down. "What's that supposed to mean-"

"You know full well what I mean. People who play hero, like you're thinkin about doing. You're bigger than me. I got the gun so I'm overconfident, right? Gonna take it away, shoot me, and run back ta save your lady friend... only Stryger is watchin' our little dots on his monitor. My dot goes out... or yours gets too far away from mine, he makes your girlfriend nice and crispy one inch at a time. The best you can hope for is she lives long enough for you to put her out of her misery yourself. But most likely, you'll just end up splattered all over this hallway the second you make a move I don't like. Not a happy ending either way."

"Only because you're telling the story," said Ethan. "Given the chance, I might come up with a different ending."

"What ye can come up with is some fresh air moving through these vents. Make a left."

A short hallway branched off to the left. It ended in a large, open room with a metal grate for a floor. A four-foot diameter pipe descended through the solid metal ceiling and went through the floor. In the room directly below them, the pipe made a 90-degree turn and vanished into a wall.

There was a door cut into the pipe at floor level. It was secured with a simple wheel lock, and a control box hung from the wall next to it. Gilliam pushed one button on the box and glanced at the tiny, dusty display that lit up.

"Yup. Blocked." He waved Ethan toward the pipe. "Looks like yer gonna do a little climbing. Pipe goes up, makes a turn kinda like the one you see down there. After that it goes straight for a bit, and the blockage is along there somewhere, short of the main fan."

"And what am I supposed to do when I find it?"

"Well maybe ye can think about unblockin' it," Gilliam said sharply.

"Tools?"

"You need tools, you come back down here and we'll get ya some."

"Typically you need tools in order to-"

"Just GET UP THERE and LOOK!"

"Fine."

Ethan turned the wheel on the metal door. It didn't move on his first two attempts, but on the third try the wheel rotated a quarter turn, disengaging the lock. Ethan pulled the door open and looked in.

"Dark," he said.

"Here." Gilliam tossed him a small flashlight. When Ethan directed the beam into the pipe, it gleamed against the inner surface. The metal was rough, but it was also slick with some kind of liquid. Ethan ran his finger across the pipe and smeared the reddish-brown sludge between his fingertips.

"Hydraulic fluid," he declared.

"Main fan is up there past the blockage. It's off."

"Yeah, its off. If this much fluid is splattered all over the inside of the pipe, there's none left inside the mechanism... so yeah, I'd say its off. "

"Yer point?"

"You're really not that smart, are you?"

"You're the one insulting the guy with the gun. Inside."

Ethan shrugged and climbed in.

---

Richards ran his hands over the dark controls in the Quentin's cockpit, observing their positions.

"These aren't right," he said into the comm link.

"What, exactly, is not right, Mr. Richards." Stryger's voice crackled horribly in his helmet. The signal was degraded. The ship's shielding and reinforced hull were not conducive to short-range radio communication, and neither was planet 4358's metal-saturated atmosphere. But Stryger wasn't that far away. The signal wouldn't distort that badly over such a short distance unless something else was wrong.

And everything had been working perfectly until he'd stepped outside the facility.

"Ship's been prepped for take-off," Richards replied. He studied the captain's control board. "Liftoff procedures were underway. Then abandoned..."

Richards flipped a switch. Nothing happened. He flipped it back.

"...no power in the cockpit. No damage, either. Looks like it was cut somewhere else in the ship just before liftoff."

Stryger spoke, but all Richard's heard was a series of sharp crackles and some other, stranger sound.

"Stryger?" he called. "Stryger boost the-"

"-is being degraded," Stryger's voice picked up with renewed strength. "Not a concern for now. Can you restore power?"

"Maybe. Depends on how and where it was cut."

"We do have a ship mechanic in our custody."

"Well then we shouldn't have any problem. I don't know yet."

"Find out what happened. Inspect the cargo hold and the weapons. Leave the comm channel open."

"Yes sir."

Richards inspected the captain's chair. No blood... no burn marks.

The straps had been adjusted. He had been the last person to fly the ship, but the straps certainly wouldn't fit him now. Now they were sized for someone much smaller.

"Sir, there was only one person here with the knowledge to prep a ship for takeoff."

"I'm aware of that, Mr. Richards."

"Looks like she was trying to leave. But she wouldn't just abandon the facility. Even under attack."

Silence.

"Sir?"

The only response was a return of the earlier interference. Harsh crackles over a bed of mixed-frequency noise. The noise sounded...

"You have a job to do, Mr. Richards. Leave the conjecture to me." Stryger replied finally.

"Sir."

Richard popped open a small section of the main control panel and reached for the sidearm that should have been there. It wasn't.

"Captain's sidearm missing." he said.

"Noted," came the reply.

He stepped out of the cockpit and made his way down a narrow hallway. He passed several small hatches. One of them was the ship's main entrance. Richards had sealed it behind him when he'd come aboard. The others were storage and equipment rooms. He would have to inspect them all eventually, but for now his mind was focused on another objective.

The hallway ended in a room with an airlock in one end, a wheeled hatch in the floor, and cabinets lining the walls.

Richards opened the first cabinet on the left.

Three plasma guns and one pulse rifle hung from hooks inside. The rifle was by far the most comforting weapon, but it was too large to be used inside a ship. Richards grabbed a plasma gun... larger than Stryger's torture device and much smaller than Gilliam's hand cannon... and secured the locker.

"Weapons secure," he announced.

"How is my cargo?"

"I'll need to restore power to get the door open-"

"Open it now, Mr. Richards. I need to know the status of the mission sooner instead of later."

"Okay. Okay, yes sir."

In another locker was a hand-crank that fit into a small circular hole below the airlock's control panel. Operating the mechanism by hand took muscle and effort. Richards barely had enough of either to accomplish the task, and managed to get the crank moving only after several minutes of embarrassingly loud grunts and bursts of extreme profanity. Every bit of it was broadcast over the open comm, but thankfully there were no comments from Gilliam, who would have received every bit of it with wild amusement.

Assuming he'd heard anything at all.

The interference in Richard's earpiece grew steadily louder as he worked. What had started out as odd, but barely noticeable static had grown to distracting levels... like someone whispering in his ear while he worked.

In fact...

CLANG!

The bolt of the cargo bay door retracted into its housing. Taking the crank with him, Richards stepped into the airlock. If he actually wanted to enter the cargo bay, he would have had to open the second airlock door with an identical procedure... but fortunately, he didn't. The second door had a window. Richards pressed the globe of his helmet against the view port and saw nothing but darkness. The emergency lights were on in the remainder of the ship, but by default they didn't illuminate the cargo bay. That was easy enough to fix. He pushed a button recessed into the wall next to him and a single row of overhead lights illuminated the bay on the other side of the door.

Massive, cylindrical containers... each one six feet high and four feet in diameter... lined the walls and filled most of the floor space.

"Stryger this is Richards."

Crackles and static.

Richards stepped out of the airlock and tried again.

"Stryger."

"Report."

"Looks like the cargo is at about 75 percent."

"Insufficient," said Stryger. "...but just barely. If there's more to load, we'll load it ourselves. I'll need a full count, but for now I want to know how soon that ship can be made to fly."

"Sir."

Richards closed the main airlock door, but didn't bother sealing it. Instead he removed the grating over the floor hatch and turned the recessed wheel. It turned easily, for which Richard's was exceedingly grateful. He pulled the hatch open.

Directly below the cargo bay were the atmospheric, deep space, and ftl engines, as well as the complex mechanisms that made them all work. The majority of it was accessible only through a maze of hatches and tubes, but there was one main room where a technician could monitor the engines, make simple adjustments, and, of course, be the first to die if something exploded. Richards looked down into a corner of the engine room... a "safe" access corner that could be sealed off from the remainder of the chamber with an explosion-resistant airlock door. That door stood open.

Anyone who knew anything about ships... pilots, technicians, even frequent passengers... knew that the engine room blast door had to remain closed, even if the room was unoccupied.

And especially if takeoff was imminent.

But there it was. Wide open.

"Hmph," said Richards. He tried to angle himself so that he could get a peek into the rest of the chamber, but he couldn't. There was a ladder feeding down, but Richards ignored it. The drop wasn't that far. He sat down on the edge of the hole and slipped in-

-and landed badly on one foot, twisting his ankle and causing an unexpected jolt of pain that made him drop his weapon.

He cursed into the open comm, then knelt down to rub his screaming ankle. It wasn't broken. Neither was his gun.

He retrieved the weapon, stood up...

...and turned around.

"Oh shit..."

---

"What cargo?" Captain Shaw said as she hauled herself up from the floor. Her wound had stopped sizzling. There would be no more physical damage from the plasma round, but the pain of what was already done was severe. For several minutes she could do nothing but watch Stryger monitor his people... watch, because it hurt too much to listen. Then she made use of the station medical kit that Stryger tossed her; treating the burn herself, with no help from the man who'd inflicted it. Eventually the pain subsided to the point where it no longer interfered with her thoughts.

She listened.

Gilliam and Richards had reported in. Weapons were missing. The ship outside was damaged just before takeoff.

Shaw finally gave in to her screaming shoulder and administered a local anesthetic. Her arm had already gone numb, but the numbness spread to mercifully engulf the wound itself.

Now she could get up.

"What's in that ship?"

"Hydrillium ore," Stryger answered. He didn't bother to turn around. "Sit down and don't interfere."

"With what? You manned this facility just to mine an metal that isn't even used any more? It's worthless... you know that. So why is there a ship full of it parked outside?"

"Because worthless to the corporation does not imply the same to everyone else. It still has its uses, Captain. One in particular..."

"Like what?"

"Quiet."

Stryger busied himself at the control panel. Shaw saw the dots the represented Gilliam and Ethan moving through a wireframe model of the facility. Tandem was below them, but there was nothing to represent her on the screen. Richards was also unrepresented... his dot had vanished shortly after he'd gone outside.

"There's no one in the facility but us, but you can't tell what's outside can you?"

"Richards, I've lost you on comm... report."

A series of hard crackles over the roar of static was all that came back.

"Richards."

More static. To Shaw, the interference almost sounded like voices whispering.

Stryger adjusted the communications equipment, putting more power behind the signal.

The whispering got louder.

"Richards, report."

Shaw glanced out the window and saw nothing but red dust. Visibility had dropped considerably since the last time she'd looked... before she'd been shot. She could have sworn she'd seen the vague outlines of buildings before, but now the only feature she saw was the near edge of the mountain range they'd barely avoided crashing into.

She was about to look away when she realized that the mountain was moving.

---

Tandem stepped off of the platform before it stopped moving. The lower chamber was the same size as the main control room, but not as brightly lit. The window was on the opposite side, and instead of the landscape outside, it looked out onto the gigantic chamber that was the hydrillium mine: a huge gaping throat ringed by platforms and machinery.

Tandem walked around the control room, peering into shadows and examining the chairs, tables and equipment. There were signs of recent occupation, but not violence. Not here.

She went outside.

The main chamber had a wide corridor leading off to her right, and a smaller one to the left. Tandem went right, sparing the mine shaft only a cursory glance. She'd search that last.

The overhead lights didn't illuminate the entire corridor. Shadows hugged the walls, but those shadows were empty save for tools and equipment, most of which was over 60 years old.. There were no intersecting corridors, but there were rooms. Whenever Tandem came to a door, she stopped to open it. Most of the rooms were pitch black. Tandem's eyes darted quickly from corner to corner and from floor to ceiling before she moved on, sealing each door behind her.

She was halfway down the corridor when she saw the damage.

Two of the overhead lights were out... not just off, but missing entirely. Even without them there was more than enough light to see the black marks on the metal floor. In some places the metal was more than just blackened; it was bent... or twisted. Her eyes followed the increasing damage to its source.

Where there should have been a set of wide double doors leading to the machine repair room, there was only a hole surrounded by jagged, blackened metal where the doors had been literally ripped away. There was shrapnel everywhere... pieces of the shredded door and the walls to which they'd been attached. Tandem ran a gloved finger along a blackened surface. One of the others may have been able to tell what had happened just by looking... where the explosives had been placed, what type was used... but Tandem simply wiped the dust from her fingers and stepped inside. The room was dark, but it didn't matter.

Corner to corner.

Floor to ceiling.

Some of the burn marks on the walls may have come from the explosion, but not all of them. Most of them were clearly blast patterns from energy weapons. A fire fight had taken place here. It had probably started with the explosion... either a trap being triggered or someone blasting their way inside.... but it ended with weapons.

-weapons like the ones that were strewn in pieces across the floor. Plasma rifles. Hand-blasters. Even a few projectile weapons, old tech that could still put a hole in an unarmored man. The entire contents of the weapon cabinets on the upper level was right here. Every weapon was in at least two pieces, and most were in quite a few more.

Tandem picked up the bent barrel of a plasma rifle. The end of it was crushed, as if it had been caught in a vice, but there were no burn marks. The explosion hadn't done that. She tossed the fragment into a corner and turned to leave-

-then stopped.

She picked up something else from the floor:

-the rest of the plasma rifle. Whatever had torn the weapon from the hand of the person who'd been wielding it hadn't bothered to remove the finger that still dangled from the trigger.

---

There was a row of handholds that ran the entire length of the pipe, but the lubricant covering everything made pulling himself up an almost comical exercise in futility. Even decades old, zero-friction lubricant still functioned remarkably well... as long as it was kept INSIDE the mechanism it was supposed to lubricate. Splashed over walls and handholds, it made keeping a grip on anything almost impossible.

"I don't know what you expect me to do up here in all this mess with no tools!" he called.

There was no reply from outside, but Gilliam was still there. He could hear his captor talking to Stryger over the com.

It took several long, frustrating minutes for Ethan to haul himself up and out of the vertical section of pipe. Once he made it into the long, horizontal run, he no longer had to contend with gravity, and the slipperiness of the splattered lubricant actually made the going easier. After shining the weak flashlight before him and finding nothing but darkness and metal walls, Ethan slid himself forward with almost no effort. He had no idea how far he was supposed to go, but if there was a blockage he would come to it eventually.

He would ALSO come to numerous branches from the main vent, which Gilliam apparently trusted him not to explore. Stryger was undoubtedly monitoring his location, but even so, if he moved fast enough...

Ethan dismissed the thought. He had no idea of the facility's floor plan. If Shaw wasn't being held hostage, maybe he could risk a game of hide and seek with Gilliam while he searched for a way to turn the situation to his advantage... find out what happened to those missing weapons, for instance. But he couldn’t take that risk now. Or could he?

The first bit of the shaft had gone straight up before it turned horizontal... which meant that he was probably just below the roof of the facility, part of the network of pipes and wiring they'd seen on the way in. There was probably a roof access hatch somewhere along this section. It might be on the far side of the main fan, but the fan wasn't working at the moment, was it? If he could find and open the hatch, he'd be out of the facility before Gilliam could get anywhere near him. But what about Shaw? What would Stryger do to her?

Ethan had stopped moving while he considered his options. Someone noticed.

"WHAT YA FIND UP THERE!" Gilliam shouted.

"NOTHING YET!" Ethan called back.

"THEN GET MOVIN!"

Ethan inspected the shaft ahead of him, looking for any signs of the blockage he'd been sent in to fix. The beam picked out a few pieces of debris. Not much, but until now the shaft had been remarkably clean. ANY debris was more than what he'd seen so far, so he slid toward the small dark shape. As he moved, his light picked up more debris... more and more chunks of something that looked a bit more solid that dust, and were too large to have gotten in past the filters at the main air intakes.

Ethan twisted around to shout back the direction he had come while still sliding himself forward.

"HEY GILLIAM! I THINK YOU MAY HAVE A CONTAINMENT PROBLEM! THERE'S SOME STUFF IN HERE THAT SHOULDN'T BE!"

"LIKE WHAT!"

Ethan's fingers bumped into the first piece of debris. He grabbed it without looking, and brought it to his face. It was a glove. There was still a hand inside it.

---

"What is that?" Shaw pointed out the window, but Stryger ignored her. The terrorist's activity at the station's control board had become much more animated. His attention devoted between several screens, he didn't see Shaw get to her feet.

She walked to the window.

It was a mountain. Not the same one, but a mountain nonetheless... a rolling mountain of poisonous dust stretching from ground to sky.

And it was headed right for them.

"Stryger. What IS that?"

Stryger glanced out the window.

"Dust cloud," he said. "Lower-atmospheric storm, so dense that it's registering as a solid mass. That's what's affecting communications... along with everything else."

"Is it supposed to be moving that fast?"

Stryger took another look out the window... this time pausing to study the wall of metallic dust rolling toward them.

"No," he said. "Nor is it supposed to be moving against the wind."

"STRYGER!" Richard's panicked voice blared from the comm unit.... accompanied by a crackling static that nearly swallowed the single word. If Richard's hadn't been yelling, he wouldn't have gotten through at all.

But he wasn't yelling just so that he could be heard.

"STRYGER, I'M OUTSIDE THE SHIP! I FOUND..."

Interference scoured away portions of the message. Each missing segment was replaced with something that sounded almost like...

"...EVERYWHERE! THE FUEL CELLS..."

"Richards, repeat," Stryger ordered. "What about the cells."

Richards wasn't listening. Either he couldn't hear Stryger, or he didn't care. The panic in his voice was sent chills down Shaw's spine. And the static... the static that wasn't just interference...

"Repeat message!"

"PIECES!"

"Stryger, this is Gilliam! We got a BIG PROBLEM here!"

Gilliam's voice was much clearer, but it, too, was struggling with the rising wail that had once been interference... had once been a whisper....

"Not now, Gilliam, Richards has a problem at the ship."

"Whatever that lad found out there can wait! We've found yer damn blockage in the air shaft!"

"It's getting closer!" Shaw blurted as she stepped away from the window. "I think you want to close this... if you can't we need to get out of this room NOW!"

"PIECES!" Richards screamed. "STUFFED INTO THE FUEL CELL PORTS! She... "

"Pieces of what, Richards! Repeat your message!"

"BODIES!" It was Ethan's voice, shouting into Gilliam's helmet. "The shaft is filled with BODIES! DOZENS OF 'EM! Somebody shoved 'em into the main fan when it was still running and-"

"Here it comes!" Shaw scurried to the other side of the room as the view outside vanished, replaced solid wall of reddish orange that rapidly began to darken. Stryger looked at it with an expression of near awe... then ignored it.

"Richards, get back inside the ship and seal yourself in!"

"...NOT GOING BACK INSIDE THAT THING! DIDN'T YOU HEAR-"

"RICHARDS LOOK AT THE DAMNED SKY!!"

"OH MY G-"

Richards screamed, but his voice was just one of many. The interference may have been caused by the storm, but it wasn't an electrical phenomenon. No storm could produce anything like the inhuman... no, all TOO human wails of agony that roared out of the comm as the sky turned to blood.

 

[To Be Continued]