The Dead Fleet (Juggernaut #3)

Fourteen

The communicator proved invaluable as they walked. Slowly and carefully, they followed a winding route back to their ships.

Each time they heard a voice on the channel they froze until they were sure the pirates were heading away from them or quickly found another path if they were close to being discovered. Their caution made for a safer, but far longer, journey than they had intended.

Radio chatter increased with each new corridor they entered. It made little sense; just names and slang and barked instructions, but the crew was waking up. The news was spreading. Unwelcome visitors were on board.

The Solar Forge was a big ship, but as large as it was there still seemed to be pirates everywhere and their original plan to stay close to the outer walls of the refinery ship had been revised again and again, until they were now deep inside the belly of the beast, far from their own ships, and far from escape.

"Malachi," said Tila, after they had narrowly avoided another patrol, "Are we getting closer to our ships. It feels like we are getting further away."

"We have to be careful."

"Let me see the map."

Malachi swapped his map for Tila's communicator. Tila traced her fingers over the diagram of the Solar Forge.

"We're no closer than we were when we left the bridge. Are we going the right way?"

"We're going the careful way. We don't want to leave a trail or make it easy for them to work out where we're heading."

"Where are we heading?"

Malachi handed Tila the communicator and took back the datapad.

"Look, this is us. The ships are over here, on one of the upper decks. The patrols seem to be spiralling away from this location here, and they've been forcing us onto the lower decks. Also, the longer we stay in the corridors the more chance we have of being seen.. But in the middle here there's a big room. See it? We can go up five decks without being seen once we get in there."

Ellie stood on her toes and peered at the map over Malachi's shoulder.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"As sure as I can be."

"What's in a room that big?"

"It must be a docking bay," said Tila over her shoulder as she glanced around the corners ahead.

"It's too far from the hull to be a docking bay. It's probably something industrial. Maybe a factory deck? Anyway I think we should be able to sneak through. They'll be searching the airlocks, not the centre of the ship. I hope."

"But Mal, when we leave that room won't they be between us and our ships?" said Ellie.

"Thats right," said Malachi. He grinned at Tila as she worked through the implications of his plan.

"So we sneak up on them instead? I like it."

"Do we have to fight them?" said Ellie.

"Yes, but we'll have the advantage of surprise. It should give us fighting chance," said Malachi.

"Good," said Tila. "A fighting chance is the best kind of chance."

As they continued their journey to the industrial centre of the ship it seemed their way had become clearer. The frequency of the patrols they had to avoid tailed off quickly. Signs and safety notices in three languages now welcomed them to the heart of the ship, and faded icons warned them of the potential dangers ahead.

They stepped into a wider corridor bisected by an industrial scale bulkhead, a huge armoured door almost half a metre thick. Scuffed black and yellow painted chevrons framed the opening.

Malachi chambered the door release and turned the wheel. The locking mechanism clanged somewhere inside. He pulled hard, and the door slowly swung open.

"Ladies first?" he said.

Tila stepped through the door.

The volume of the room beyond was enormous. It was bigger than than any space on the Juggernaut Tila had seen. The market was closest thing Tila could think of. The stark geometry of the two rooms was the only thing they had in common. The market in New Haven was formed from an upside-down pyramid. This room was nothing more than a giant rectangular box, and about as welcoming.

They had entered at one end on a mid level walkway which circled the entire perimeter. In the corners, Switchback stair wells in metal cages hugged each corner and connected every deck in the room.

At the centre of the room, two decks above the factory floor, and with a commanding view of the vast space, was an octagonal control area bridged from the two side walls. Two more stairwells rose from the ground to meet the bridges, and continued upward into the gloom.

From the dark upper reaches of the room cranes draped hooks as big as a grown man hung from thick chains that descended as far as the octagon. More walkways edged different sections of the room at each deck, but nowhere could they see a single path from where they stood to where they wanted to go.

The deck floor was a maze of complex machinery, all of it sat dormant. Conveyor belts threaded their way from machine to machine like a black web. Each machine device was surrounded by more of the black and yellow chevrons painted on the floor.

And directly in front of them stacked to their eye level and locked safely in place, were industrial containers. They were battered and buckled from their twelve years of work and every one bore the scratched and faded stencil of their mother ship: Far Horizon.

Tila gasped and touched Malachi's arm. 'Do you see that? Cargo containers from the colony mission.'

He leaned over the guardrail for a closer look. There was no doubt now. They could only be here if large scale shipping was taking place from Baru.

"I see it. We can get more proof from those containers."

"What other proof do we need? We have the logs from the bridge," said Ellie.

"These containers will have their own logs to record cargo, origin and destination, and jump logs for shipping taxes. We should take a copy," said Malachi.

"Do we need more proof?" said Tila.

"It can't hurt, Tila. The more we have the easier all of this will be to prove. They can't ignore all of it can they?"

"Do we, though?" said Ellie. "Shouldn't we just leave?"

"How long do you need?" Tila said.

"Just a couple of minutes. All I need is a cargo scanner."

"We have to go down there?" Ellie sounded doubtful.

"I don't see anyone. And the machinery is switched off. Maybe everyone who works here is out looking for us," said Malachi.

Tila was already heading toward the stairs on the left. "So now's our best chance. Come on!"