The Dead Fleet (Juggernaut #3)

Sixteen

'Can we go now?Please?' said Ellie.

'Mal?' said Tila.

'You said we had enough on the bridge,' Ellie chided.

'Hey, I thought we had enough evidence from the bridge. This is icing on the cake. There's nothing else for us here.'

'I thought we did. But that was before I saw this refinery. I have to be sure we haven't missed anything. I have to.'

'Tila, we have enough,' said Malachi. 'You said so yourself.'

'I thought we had enough when we went to Parador but they didn't believe us. They need to believe us.'

'I'm sure this is enough. We have the shuttle logs from the Juggernaut, the flight data from here and the cargo data from the refinery. I even grabbed a chuck of ore, see?' He pulled a white rock from his pack about the size of a glowcube. 'This is valuable stuff. It will get their attention.'

'Who's attention?'

'Anyone. Everyone. Conway, the cabal, the media. It's enough.'

'Please can we go?' Ellie said again. She looked longingly at the corner stairwell at the far end of the room.'

Tila squeezed Ellie's shoulder.

'We can go, and this time we're not stopping.'

'That's what she said last time,' Ellie whispered to Malachi. He only smiled and shouldered the bag.

They crept around the cargo pods to the edge of the refinery. The sides of the room had been marked off as safe areas. They were far enough from the machinery that accidents couldn't happen. Tila guessed the distance from here to the stairs at the far end was than two hundred metres. An easy sprint.

'Then up those stairs five decks and we're back on track,' said Malachi. 'Another hundred and fifty meters of corridors and we should be near the ships.'

'Should?'

'Well, closer than we are now.'

Ellie took one last look at the stairs, looked back to Tila and Malachi and started running.

'Well?' she called over her shoulder.

Malachi shrugged at Tila and took off after Ellie. Tila hesitated for half a second as she thought about how close they were now, and the anticipation of an uninterrupted sprint through the refinery. Finally a large unbroken straight line. She smiled to herself while no one was looking and sprinted forward.

Mal's rock collection slowed him down and the way the pack banged against his lower back made running impossible so their sprint became a fast hobble, but the end was in sight.

Tila desperately wanted to sprint the last hundred meters. Not out of fear, although danger was all around them, but for the love of running. There was nowhere on the Juggernaut that had a uninterrupted flat space like this.

At least not on the inside.

Even Ellie was smiling. Her blonde hair bobbed in the dim overhead lights of the refinery as she ran. Even she could keep up with Malachi at this speed.

Even this is a moment of freedom, a taste of another life, thought Tila. But it won't always be like this. It can't be. When we get back I'll have to tell her-

Malachi grabbed her arm. The thought evaporated. He pushed her suddenly across the safety line, away from the wall and into the maze of machinery. At the same time he pulled hard on Ellie's sleeve and almost hauled her across the line and into Tila.