Blink: Phantom (Book 3)

21

With Niamh and Idas flanking him, Darien crept quickly and quietly through the empty, twilit corridors of the vessel. Every passage was sectioned off with thick rib-like supports and the whole vessel seemed to be constructed of a dark metal alloy he didn't recognise.

They had yet to encounter any of the crew and no alarms had started blaring to signal their discovery. So far, so good. Still, he felt thoroughly uneasy. The halls were eerily quiet without the rumble of a normal engine to fill the void, and the lack of windows meant he didn't have any idea where the ship had transported to.

Working their way through the dim-lit passages they moved aft for several minutes, turning through a series of gridiron junctions. No bulkheads barred their passage – another oddity of design. If the ship suffered a hull breach the whole deck would decompress without the protective airlocks. Perhaps another quirk built into the vessel to accommodate its mode of travel.

After a dozen more corridors of sneaking they still hadn't run into another living being. He moved up to a turn in their path, tucking his body close against the wall. Raising his Compac he peered around the bend only to find another empty hall.

"Clear," he whispered. Niamh slipped past him, catlike and silent, Compac locked against her shoulder as she scanned left and right. She stopped at the next junction.

"Did they do a life signs scan of this hulk?" Idas said quietly, moving up behind him.

"Couldn't get a clear reading," Darien replied. "With the inference this thing spews out, they only managed to drill through with hull-down sensors to get us a reading of that hangar bay."

"Well where the hell is everyone?"

Darien shrugged but he didn't have an answer. He too was beginning to wonder where the ship's crew was hiding.

"Guys," Niamh hissed from up ahead. "Come look at this."

Nodding to Idas, he stepped out into the corridor. Side by side they scuttled over to where their comrade stood. She was looking up at the ceiling, her brow creasing into a puzzled frown. Following her eye line, Darien saw what appeared to be a cylindrical power conduit embedded in the roof, running in both directions to disappear into the honeycomb. Bands of red throbbed faintly along its length. He'd never seen anything like it on other ships, navy or otherwise.

"That's sure not standard equipment," Idas murmured.

"Must be feeding from whatever they've got stuffed in the trunk." Niamh pointed down the corridor with her cannon. "But at least now we've got a trail to follow. Whatever it is must feed out from that aft section to power those emitters on the outer hull."

Darien nodded. "Alright, on me. Idas, watch our six. Just because we haven't run into the crew doesn't mean there's no-one here. This ship wasn't flying itself."

The trio fell into formation again with Darien at the head. They moved one by one, corner by corner, passage by passage. They continued to follow the snaking red-lined conduit as it wound through the decks, and it became quickly apparent that Niamh's guess was correct. Other lines intersected with the main strand the closer to the aft section they got. All the corridors and conduits were converging in one direction.

Peering around another bend, Darien jerked back sharply when he finally saw the first member of the ship's crew. He motioned furiously for the others to backtrack until they could duck into a shadowed alcove further down the passage.

The new, bulkier armour made it more of a challenge to shrink up against the wall, but Darien did his best, keeping his breathing shallow as he stared intently towards the growing sound of footsteps. A few seconds later a guard strolled past without so much as a glance in either direction. Evidently the man didn't expect there to be anyone else around. He was only in sight for a moment, but Darien saw enough; jet black armour and a colonial issue assault rifle.