Size, shape, color, she ticked through the well-ingrained set of questions as she focused on the claw. Roughly four meters in diameter, shaped like a metal starfish, dark grey in color. A flash of red caught her eye, the triangular shape stenciled along the base of a heavy pulley.

Condition? The claw looked serviceable, no outward signs of damage.

Appears to be? Darcy zoomed in closer, the ma.s.sive steel grapple filling her vision. "It appears to be one heavy sonofab.i.t.c.h." Opting for a more technical description, she tagged the marker as CRANE, HEAVY. The designation joined the numerous features scattered across the electronic range card.

Wedged in a narrow crevice near the Lobby ceiling, Darcy remained deathly still. From her vantage point she commanded a wide view that included Papa-Six, the Tower and most of the catwalks. She had committed the entire layout of the Lobby to memory, with a focus on points of entry. To the best of Darcy's limited knowledge, the gargantuan engineering bay still represented the easiest way in and out of the ship. Her hunter's mind told her that keeping an eye on the front door was a prudent idea. The path of any forseeable attack would lead through the cavernous metal expanse that stretched out below the sniper's railgun.

The exercise proved far easier said than done. The Lobby amounted to a steel canyon whose walls were littered with balconies and windows. Darcy's very organized brain was stressed to the point of numbness as she tried to collate the boundless volume of information. If bad guys started popping up, she could be facing a world-cla.s.s Hogan's Alley.

"Draw a bead and make 'em bleed," Darcy drawled with a measure of malicious antic.i.p.ation, confident that she could make this particular shooting gallery decidedly inhospitable.

In retrospect, Darcy acknowledged, the odds of a shooting scenario seemed awfully slim. Whether fifty years old or fifty thousand, the ship struck her as little more than a dramatic, frozen tomb. Whatever brought the vessel down here, n.o.body survives for long in sub-zero cold with no light and no food. Darcy wasn't lost on the double-edged irony.

On the other hand, Monster's encounter was a disturbing anomaly. No matter how implausible, the possibility of survivors could not be entirely discounted. The ship was certainly big enough to hide another energy source deep in it's bowels. Beyond the ship itself lay an untold expanse of caverns with who-knows-how-many sources of geothermal energy. In Darcy's military experience, the only constant was uncertainty. She prepared as if for war.

The familiar routine felt good and offered a welcome point of focus. Despite long hours crammed in the aerie-like hide, Darcy suffered no aching muscles, no cramps. In point of fact, she felt pretty d.a.m.n good.

What the f.u.c.k was that?

Darcy jerked back out of the scope, her attention snapping to the torn balcony hanging askew just overhead. On reflex her mind engaged the chameleon and the tangled hues of her surrounding spread across her like a rapid-growing mold.

Darcy's mind struggled to categorize the unexpected sound. Not a footstep or the tell-tale creak of a stalker's weight, the tone was more like a murmur. With a falcon's eye she swept the line of torn railing. Not even air moved between the broken bars of steel.

Sound warbled once more, dull and distorted, from somewhere near the ceiling. Fighting the urge to sit upright for a better view, Darcy slid backward in the crevice and drew the railgun close to her chest. Rolling slowly to one side, she rocked the heavy weapon skyward; the barrel a scant few inches from the wall. As the stock snugged into her shoulder, the scope engaged.

The ceiling was a chaotic ma.s.s of ductwork and pipes. Thick corrugated conduits snaked between angled girders of structural steel that measured meters across. Immense air vents dotted the ceiling in a regular, grid-like pattern. Each circular air handler measured roughly four meters in diameter, the louvered grates edge-on like the maw of a turbine engine.

Darcy eyed the network of composite fiber tubes. The immense air ducts criss-crossed the ceiling like an enclosed highway, a possible explanation of how something could have crossed the Lobby unseen. She tracked along the largest one in search of a missing grate.

An odd sensation tugged at her mind, a glimmer of deja vu. She had not yet conducted a detailed sweep of the ceiling but the inverted field of equipment oozed an eerie familiarity. Through the scouring optronic eye, Darcy could make out patterns of corrosion running along metal plates, the crust of ice clinging to every crevice.

"Open grate," she muttered under her breath, "just behind a busted compressor." She screwed her eyes shut, focusing on the image that hung clear in her memory. The compressor's torn drive chain hanging loose from cracked pulleys. The number 41.

Another sound broke her concentration, now level with her and to the left. Darcy flattened into the wall, trying desperately to zero the source.

More than one, she recognized, her teeth grinding. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are talking to each other, coordinating.

The eroding situation demanded a tactical change. Whatever moved through the Lobby walls did so invisibly and Darcy wasn't going to wait for them to pop up in her face. With great deliberation, her fingers slid down to her hip and closed on a familiar curved slab. As she positioned the device near the rim of the ledge, she felt the words FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY embossed faintly along the curved outer sh.e.l.l.

Sneak up on this, motherf.u.c.ker.

Darcy quietly pulled a fistfull of dirty fiber insulation from a breach in the wall and placed the cottony pink wad in front of the antipersonnel mine. Wriggling methodically backward, Darcy slithered feet-first through several feet of torn wall and emerged in a dark hallway on the far side, her original point of entry.

To her right the hall led back to the turbolift, but the view from that angle was sure to be limited. Darcy looked aft as she quickly stowed the rifle, her mind trying to picture the layout of the Lobby cut into single floors. She had seen a wide section of catwalk extending from somewhere aft, angling up in a series of staircase landings to the ceiling. The vantage point should give her high ground and a flanking position. Pivoting to her left, she bolted downslope, her concern over slipping lost in the urgent need to move.

The metal rungs barely caught her eye as she bolted past a half-open hatch. She braked hard, dielectric actuators causing the polymeric gel in her soles to deform in a high-grip tread pattern. Cursing the sneaker-like squeal, Darcy ducked through the hatch and launched herself up the ladder.

Reaching the top, she pushed up on the circular hatch that sat over the ladder-tube like a hinged manhole cover. It lifted with barely a creak. The scant crescent gap allowed Darcy to peer out at floor-level from the highest balcony in the Lobby. The ceiling hung just overhead and a set of tiered landings rose to meet the roofline. Motionless, Darcy strained to listen. The silence told her nothing; her flanking maneuver might have put her out of earshot as intended.

Or not, she snarled, and the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are just waiting for me.

Taking a deep breath, Darcy raised the hatch enough to slither through. Arms outstretched, she dragged herself forward with only fingers and toes, her progress measured in inches between intermittent pauses.

The sniper edged her way to a pile of mechanical debris, where she looked for a gap that would allow her to use the heap as a screen. An overhanging flap of crumpled sheet metal proved the best she could find. Keeping the muzzle behind the improvised blind, Darcy gazed out through the scope.

Rapidly quartering the room, Darcy tore through a hasty search that would pick up only the most obvious tells-- motion, shine, striking difference in color. She hadn't expected to catch someone out in the open but couldn't pa.s.s up the chance for a lucky break. Finishing the wide z-pattern, Darcy reluctantly accepted that her allotment of good karma had been burned on the table. If she was going to get an edge now, she'd have to earn it herself.

A sc.r.a.pe, metal on metal, short but distinct. The image in the scope streaked up to the landing closest to the ceiling. Slowly now, the crosshairs crawled right to left across a battery of air handlers. Condensation chambers rose two abreast from each compressor. Even through the grime that encrusted the blue-painted unit, the number 43 was visible in yellow.

A full heartbeat late Darcy registered the familiarity and the scope centered the numerals once more. She slid her view to the right where condensor 44 appeared to be intact. Reversing her track, the sniper swept left across three units, coming to a halt on a cracked pulley, the split chain hanging motionless on one side. Her breath quickened.

The darkness beyond was blurred by the depth of field but she could still make out the dark louvered circle. Darcy pushed the zoom forward with delicate care until she drew the grate into sharp clarity. A shattered lock dangled limp on the mangled frame. Beyond, the entire grate hung askew.

The skin rippled along Darcy's spine. Pulling off the riflescope she craned over the balcony lip and struggled to spot her first hide.

"No chance," she muttered, knowing full well that the huge structure that blocked her view down would have blocked her view up just as well. It would have been impossible to see any of the compressors from below, and yet 41 stood before her, and the open grate beyond, precisely as she-- Imagined? Remembered? She struggled to frame an impossible event in some logical rationale, but nothing fit. She could not have known the grate was there, any more than she could know what was beyond. And yet somehow, she did know. She remembered.

Darcy drew the rifle back to her shoulder and peered at the grate. Darkness beckoned beyond, where the curved sides of the duct ran straight and true to a four-way junction some thirty meters in. She knew the way the metal groaned under great weight, how the seams snagged more going in than coming out. The picture grew sharper in her mind, details of sound and feel resolving to unnatural clarity. The sensations became immersive, absorbing her.

Her mind moved quickly through the ductwork, advancing in improbably long strides. One leg after another reached forward, clawed talons biting into the curved walls. A metallic clatter filled her ears, sounds that were at once alien and yet somehow perfectly in place. Voices murmured, slurred voices she could feel more than hear.

Emerging from one section of duct, Darcy reached out with a metallic claw that should have been her hand; at least it felt like her own hand as it clamped down on a length of pipe. The metal tube crumpled in her grasp. Her immense weight swung effortlessly between two heavy columns, a fan of arms to either side of her body s.n.a.t.c.hing at every conceivable foothold. Just as quickly, she plunged headlong into another tube, this one smaller than the first.

Blue light wavered at the end of the dark tunnel. Lake light, Darcy recognized as she scuttled closer. The disk of blue expanded quickly to reveal details beyond. She was lower in the Lobby, perhaps halfway down to the lake surface. Gazing from within the tube, she could see some of the catwalks that angled towards the Tower.

Motion on one of the suspended walkways caught her attention and she felt her wide body hunker down between a pair of vent frames. Tension gathered in her numerous arms and legs as she made out two shapes that moved slowly along the steel bridge. One of the grey figures was decidedly larger that the other, a Gatling gun unmistakable beneath his right arm.

Her perspective edged closer.

CHAPTER 22.

"You're f.u.c.king dead, Rimmer."

Jenner tried to twist away from the armored hand that pinned his throat against the wall. The Marine's other hand, clenched in a fist, hovered just off the tip of Jenner's nose. Crumpled bits of foil and vacuseal sprouted between the carbon-clad fingers.

The fist c.o.c.ked back and Jenner yelped, eyes clamped shut as he turned his face from the blow. Thunder echoed in his ear, a tooth-rattling vibration that proved remarkably painless. Somehow he thought having his skull caved in would hurt more. Jenner opened one eye in a fearful squint.

Taz stood frozen in place, his fist buried in the wall alongside Jenner's head. The Marine's entire body trembled. With a metallic screech, the first tore free and Jenner felt his body lurch, shoved away by the hand at his throat. He slid across the wall and crashed to the floor, bouncing down the pitched floor in a jumble of flailing limbs.

"The Majah'd have my b.o.l.l.o.c.ks for breakfast if I fragged you now you b.l.o.o.d.y little wog. But when he find out you've rifled our b.l.o.o.d.y rations," Taz hurled the fistful of torn wrappers, "then you and me are gonna 'ave a go."

Jenner's stomach twisted as he watched the bits of foil flutter to the deck. He had come so close, watching the Marines store their food, their medicines. The plan had been a simple one, but not without dangers. Getting caught by Taz with a gutfull of MREs and a pocket of empty wrappers was just about as dangerous as Jenner could imagine.

Taz paced to the center of the room as a string of curses spooled endlessly under his breath. He turned back and Jenner could see the knife in his hand. The serrated blade twirled as if on its own, one moment pointed up as though ready to carve a turkey, then in a sudden crescent of silver it switched ends, extending edge-out along the curve of Taz's forearm. The rapid cyclic display was unnerving.

Jenner glanced to the door and prayed that someone would return. The odds, he knew, were slim. Monster and the mechanic were supposed to be fixing something and the girl had gone off on some kind of lone patrol. He had overheard the Major talking to St.i.tch about finding a bridge, although Jenner couldn't imagine anybody building a bridge where there were no roads. Whatever the case, Jenner feared that every possible source of protection was scattered, too far to hear a single scream. Watching Taz spin the knife, Jenner doubted that he'd last long enough to scream twice.

As if in confirmation of Jenner's worst fear, Taz spun around abruptly and barked, "What?"

Jenner's hands flinched up to his chest, palms out. "I didn't shay anything," he bleated, his tone high-pitched and quivering.

"Where are you?" The long knife disappeared into its sheath as a stocky carbine took its place in the Marine's hands. Taz took two long strides toward the door before Jenner realized that the Marine's comment was directed at someone else. The urgent chatter continued as Taz blew through the doorway and vanished down the hall. "Hang on, I'll be there in two mikes..." The voice disappeared before the pounding footsteps faded to silence.

Jenner sat breathing heavily and listened for the rapid return of footsteps that would reveal the cruel joke. Seconds ticked by in silence. For the first time since awakening, Jenner was alone.

A hand nervously crept to his face, gums closing down on a nub that had no nail. He looked at the hand and regarded the lumpy appendage with an equal measure of disgust and self-pity.

A flicker of silver caught his eye as a sc.r.a.p of foil glinted in the light. Jenner's heart skipped a beat; he still had the plan. Accelerated perhaps, but he was way past going back now.

The MREs weren't steak dinners to be sure, but each square block of sawdust-flavored gel was packed with nutrients. He had tried to make sense out of the labels; protein, polydextrose, cyanocobalimine-- whatever it meant, the stuff was made to keep Marines alive so it had to have some value. Looking across the room, Jenner made his decision.

Driven by a mounting urgency, he scrambled to the counter where the Marines had stacked their supplies. Clumsily he tore into the remaining packs, shoveling wads of food down his throat. Wrappers he couldn't tear he simply chewed with his back teeth, sucking gooey contents from tattered strips. Jenner choked down the last of the spa.r.s.e supplies and cast about for anything else that looked remotely like the stuff humans are made of. He rummaged the first aid supplies, sifting through the stack of candidates.

"Syntheshkin bandage, gets abs...o...b..d by the body." He tossed the roll onto the gloss surface of the medical repair table. "Plashma pack," he read, holding up the small ceramite container of condensed blood. "Shounds about right." He flipped the second item next to the bandage. A spool of sutures and a tube of antibiotic followed, Jenner's criteria having no clear definition. He tossed a set of thermoplastic splints over his shoulder and paused to read the label on a small box of green pads before deciding that it too was worthless.

The word MIDAZOLAM caught his eye, small black letters that nearly wrapped around the vial of cinnamon-colored liquid. He grabbed it with nubby fingers, ignoring the raw twinge. With considerable effort Jenner forced an infuser head over the neck of the vial and pressed firmly, noting the hiss familiar to junkies across the galaxy. If the life offered any consolation prizes, he knew d.a.m.n well how to work an infuser.

His heart beat like a jackhammer as Jenner scrambled to the door and peered down the hall in both directions. Nothing moved, not a sound in either direction.

Shuffling quickly back to the table he took a deep breath and pressed the infuser against the flesh of his neck and thumbed the release. A descending hiss cut through the air and a delicious haze began to wind its way through Jenner's senses.

He exhaled a long slow breath and laid back onto the table.

CHAPTER 23.

Ridgeway hurtled down the sloped hall, toward the Tower and the drumbeat of gunfire. Light flashed through the open doors at the end of the hall, the yellow-orange blaze of muzzle-flash. CAR in hand as he rounded the corner, Ridgeway burst into the Lobby.

Darcy was somewhere high on the stern wall. Ridgeway couldn't see her but the sniper rifle's pulsing muzzle flash was brightest along the ceiling. Straight across the room, a section of air duct disintegrated in a blistering hail of fiery impacts. Below, Monster and Merlin stood out on a long section of catwalk, back to back, weapons held high.

Defense formation, Ridgeway recognized immediately. Unknown targets, maybe multiple. His CAR snapped to his shoulder as he swept the convoluted maze of ducts that hung above the two Marines. At least two sections were already riddled, smoke curling from fist-sized holes. Darcy was reducing a third to burning sc.r.a.p.

Something tore with a horrendous shriek and a thirty-foot section of ductwork tore free. Amid the corkscrew of unraveling metal framework, a large, dark shape plummeted toward the walkway.

Monster spun low and drove a shoulder into Merlin's midsection, lofting the smaller Marine in a brutal fireman's carry. The falling ma.s.s slammed into the catwalk with a fury, smashing through the grated floor and plowing down into the lake in an eruption of glowing coolant. The two Marines vanished from sight as the floor collapsed beneath them.

Ridgeway dimly heard his own voice shout Monster's name as he vaulted over the rail and dropped some thirty feet to the next landing. Polymer muscles sucked up the shock as he slammed down on the floor. Three long strides and a second drop landed him on the bisected walkway. He charged forward, running for the four grey fingers dug into the ledge of twisted steel.

Sliding like a base runner, Ridgeway's gauntlet slapped down on the outstretched hand. "Gotcha!"

Metal groaned in reply, a shudder that rattled through Ridgeway's chest as the floor dropped several inches. "Hang on," he snarled through clenched teeth as his left groped wildly for a hold.

"What the h.e.l.l'd you think I was gonna do, clap?"

Ridgeway peered over the uneven rim of folded steel and traced down the ma.s.sive armored limb to a facemask only a few feet from his own. Draped over Monster's shoulder, Merlin hung head down, his boots waving. Ridgeway only grunted as he hauled at the double load.

Monster's left hand groped up and clutched a piece of the catwalk's frame. In a clumsy tangle of arms and legs, the ball of armor inched its way up the hanging metal flap and collapsed in a heap onto the first few feet of level walkway. Just an arm's length away, the damaged section of catwalk tore away and crashed down atop the dark ma.s.s at the lake's surface.

Merlin rose unsteadily to his feet as Ridgeway leaned over a broken rail and looked down. Wreckage lay smashed across the lowermost stretch of catwalk, which itself was crushed down just below the lake's surface. In the midst of the knot of girders and grated steel sat the dark metallic shape, tendrils splayed out in a lifeless snarl. Ridgeway studied it for several seconds before he rolled to his elbows with a tired sigh.

"You wanna tell me why you lit up a turbine?"

Monster's facemask drew back in a brief jerk. The big man rolled to one knee and peered over the edge. As he turned back toward Ridgeway, oversized shoulder plates rose in a slow shrug. "s.h.i.t if I know."

"We were headed back to Sickbay," Merlin chimed in, rapping the side of his helmet with the palm of his hand as if to clear water from his ears, "at least we were until the LT started pounding the c.r.a.p out of the plumbing. At that point it was all we could do to just stay out of the way."

Ridgeway looked up towards the ceiling, unable to spot the sniper amid the acres of metal and shadow. What the h.e.l.l was she doing? He tried to raise her on the comm but found nothing but hiss in reply.

"Probably the static Major." Merlin jerked a thumb at the random threads of lightning that rippled across the aft bulkhead wall. "All that voltage is playing h.e.l.l with comm."

Ridgeway stood silently, his eyes fixed on the ma.s.s of smoking metal below. The ball of wreckage slowly sank beneath the lake surface, dragging the lowermost walkway along. Air escaped the machine with a breathy rush as it sank from sight. In a moment Ridgeway could see only bubbles.

"All right, let's get back to sickbay."

Before he could finish, something yanked Ridgeway off his feet. Not explosive, he knew instinctively, but powerful. Merlin dropped to the floor in a heap while Monster staggered drunkenly. Ridgeway's hands lashed out and he caught himself on the rail. As quickly as it hit, the effect pa.s.sed.

"What the h.e.l.l was that?" Monster demanded of no one in particular.

Ignoring the question, Ridgeway gripped the rail as a deepening vibration rattled up through his gauntlets. His sense of balance already grasped the change as his attention jumped madly from one anomaly to the next. The huge magnetic claw swung like a pendulum as shattered ice flaked from suddenly moving links. Sc.r.a.p metal and debris clattered from a hundred ledges around the Lobby, falling not at an angle to the walls, but parallel with them.

Oh s.h.i.t.

"Move!" Ridgeway's command exploded as he grabbed at Merlin's collar. The entire surface of the pool was already beginning to roll into a gargantuan swell. "Go, go!"

Ridgeway shoved Merlin ahead, breaking into a dash that was no longer impeded by a sloping floor. The glowing lake, flat to where gravity had been just a second before, now leaned impossibly up the far wall. Tons of coolant surged to find its own level in a world that had just shifted in alignment.

Picking up speed like a luminescent avalanche, the mountain of glowing fluid toppled toward the running Marines.

CHAPTER 24.