Olivia remembered the difficult moments that followed on the bridge of the Beast of Burden, as they decided who had to go back and activate the emergency hangar clearance function in the cockpit. It was unsafe to do it from the hangar itself, because of the decompression, but when Al Hamra asked who was going to do it they all looked at him in sullen silence, everyone thinking the same thing. Time was tight, and would the people on the Beast of Burden wait for the volunteer in the bridge, or just light out without them, leaving them to wait for their fate in the useless bridge surrounded by severed hands and their encroaching fate? Finally, Saqr spoke up. “I’ll do it,” she said. “Olivia, you come with me. If anything goes wrong we’ll need your tools.”

  Dr. Delecta looked as if she were about to object to sending the two most important members of their crew, but she said nothing. Al Hamra nodded, and as Olivia and Saqr left the small ship’s bridge in their exo-suits to initiate the emergency purge he began giving instructions, telling Dr. Delecta to do a quick scan of the ship to determine its primary physical installations, with Adam to guard her. Siladan he ordered to check through all the ship’s systems for any useful information, while he secured the air lock for the purge.

  Olivia and Saqr hustled back towards the bridge as quickly as they could, but they did not need to go that far. Olivia noticed a purge mechanism just inside the vacuum-sealed door at the base of the stairs, right outside the hangar. She called back to Al Hamra, and they initiated the purge. They watched through the heavy glass of the vacuum door as the rear doors of the hangar swung open, slowly revealing a vista of stars, scattered across the dark emptiness of space like so many glittering grains of sand. Beneath them lay the long, wide grey foundation of the Ghazali’s stern, half a kilometre of plain silver-grey metal stretching down to the bulge of its useless engines. As the doors opened onto this stunning scene every small piece of flotsam, rubbish, equipment or cargo that was not tied down was swept up and dragged out into space by the explosive decompression of the hangar. Ropes and chains streamed outward, pieces of metal and toolboxes flicked past them and tumbled out into the vast blank emptiness, and larger crates and boxes moved and shifted around on the hangar floor until the pressure of the evacuating air eased. Finally the movement stopped, and they looked at each other through their exo-suit helmets.

  “Time to see if these suits work,” Olivia tried to sound light-hearted, but with so many terrible coincidences so far in this journey, she struggled to keep her voice strong. Saqr gave her a thumbs up, and they pushed through the vacuum-sealed door, accompanied by a gust of condensation as the air from the stairwell exploded past them. As they descended the stairs into the hangar a ladder extended from the Beast of Burden’s ventral air lock, and they hustled over to it and began climbing.

  Inside, everything was order and warmth and air. Saqr took the pilot’s seat beside Siladan, who operated the sensors, and Olivia slid into the engineer’s position on the starboard side. The bridge was a small, efficient space with four control panels, large enough for the six of them to stand in but not comfortable. Dr. Delecta sagged into the fourth chair, looking drained and tired, and Adam and Al Hamra stood at the back, watching out of the viewscreen. “Let’s go,” Al Hamra ordered, and at his command Saqr flipped on the landing lights, brilliant beams of stark white picking deep shadows behind the jumbled crates and small vehicles at the end of the hangar.

  “This is a salvage ship,” Siladan told them as Saqr began activating engine controls and maneuvering the ship slowly backwards towards the exit. “I went through the registry and found nothing about ownership. Looks like the captain of the Fatima’s Bounty had taken possession of it and was planning to sell it.”

  “Did they have the rights assigned?” Al Hamra asked, watching with arms folded as the edges of the hangar doors flowed into view, Saqr expertly flying the ship backwards into space. As the ship’s speed increased the view expanded, showing first the stern engines of the Fatima’s Bounty and then the silver-grey expanse of the Ghazali’s wide midships bulk, the bridge tower rising ahead of them like a cliff. Beyond that were the spinning stars and the vast expanse of space.

  “No,” Siladan replied, “Just the salvage certificate, stamped and signed in Coriolis. The captain must have been looking for a seller when the call came out for this mission, and stopped the process so they could make some easy money.” The last part he put in air quotes, drawing a wry smile from Dr. Delecta where she slumped in her chair, watching the Hamura system expand around them in the viewscreen. “Perfect timing for us,” he added. “We just scored a free ship.” As he made this announcement the stable base of the Ghazali started spinning against the suddenly fixed backdrop of the distant stars as Saqr engaged the engines and set a course into space, taking the Beast of Burden out of the bigger ship’s frame of reference. They began to move forward, leaving the bigger ship to drop behind them.

  “We’re out!” Saqr announced, and everyone raised a ragged cheer. The star field began to move as Saqr turned the ship, pointing it away from the Hamura system’s star and setting it into an escape path from the Ghazali’s imminent explosion.

  “That’s funny,” Siladan muttered after the cheering had died down. “I can’t get any response from the Portal station.”

  “Why are you hailing them?” Al Hamra asked him.

  “Because they should have noticed a space battle and explosions happening in their region,” Siladan replied. “Portal stations have excellent sensors. They should be trying to find out what’s happening, or sending an emergency signal in-system. But there’s nothing.”

  “Is there a time lag?” Dr. Delecta asked, but he shook his head.

  “Negligible. We shouldn’t be too far away.”

  “Put it on visual,” Al Hamra suggested, and the viewscreen shivered and changed, to show a small silver-white dot floating in a patch of empty space. Siladan zoomed the view, until the station’s details were visible, a slender main hull with a smaller spindle protruding at right angles at one end, and the characteristic spiral-shaped Portal antenna at the end of a spar that jutted out from the centre of the main hull. They could see the Portal itself in the far distance, a smear of pulsating shadows between the spiral structure of the antenna and the star around which the station orbited. It pulsed and moved in vaguely unphysical ways, like a smear of oil on the surface of still water, moved by occasional distant ripples and tides that they could not comprehend.

  “Looks dead,” someone observed, and Siladan zoomed in a little more until they could almost see the line of viewports along the side of the main hull. There was no sign of light where the residential quarters might be, but without an intricate knowledge of the station’s layout they could not judge.

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  “No weapon damage,” Adam told them. “No signs of atmospheric venting. Don’t think it was attacked.”

  “Sensor readings are in,” Siladan said. “Hard to tell with Portal tech, but maybe the main reactor is down.”

  “Hit with the same radiation surge?” Adam asked, and Adam nodded agreement.

  “I think the Portal looks strange,” Saqr said, after they had stared for a few seconds longer at the screen, everyone trying to find their own insight into the station’s silence by staring at its implacable exterior. “How long does a Portal stay up if the station stops working?”

  “Do they generate it?” Olivia asked quietly as their attention turned to the zone of vague shadow on the coreward side of the station. “Or control it?” She had sudden visions of the Portal growing, sucking the star through to the Dark Between the Stars and collapsing the entire system, with them in it.

  “I don’t think so,” Saqr replied. “I think the antenna helps to predict it, so the station can always give you the right entrance trajectory. That’s the Portal Builder tech, the part that understands the Portal and translates it for us. Nobody knows how the Portals work. So why is it moving strangely …?” Her voice trailed off, caught in her fascination with the strangely moving space-time phenomenon beyond the station. Her whole body was hunched over, sitting on the edge of the pilot seat with her legs drawn up like a bird on a perch.

  When she looked back on their escape from the Ghazali Olivia remembered that staring at the strange phenomenon made her feel vaguely sacrilegious, and she looked away from the centre of the viewscreen to scan the stars, trying to draw her gaze away from that strange technology of a lost civilization which, although it was the fulcrum of the Third Horizon’s success and the key to the survival of its interstellar civilization, also hinted at sinister proto-religious rituals and dangerous secrets. It was then that she saw the stern of the Zafirah tumbling through space beyond the station, and gasped in shock. “Is that the Zafirah?” She asked, pointing at the corner of the screen. Siladan zoomed in, and she watched the macabre spectacle of the Zafirah’s destruction. They could see only the stern of the ship, a half kilometre-long wedge of grey and black tumbling end over end in a complicated, uncontrolled trajectory away from the Portal. Plumes of gas vented from holes in the hull, and from the massive midships breach where the vessel had sheared in half they could see a stream of debris and dust flowing in expanding spirals behind the wreck.

  “Baga …” Dr. Delecta whispered in horror, drawing out the second syllable of the imprecation as the rest of them watched the destroyer’s end in silence. Siladan zoomed in further, revealing more debris falling from holes in the flanks and bow.

  “That’s weapon damage,” Adam told them, keeping his voice low and solemn. “Multiple heavy cannon, maybe the same weapon that damaged the Ghazali.”

  “So whoever ambushed us destroyed the Zafirah?” Saqr asked. “How is that possible? It must have been already through the Portal! The only crew on the bridge were doing final transit checks and everyone was in stasis. It couldn’t come back through the Portal like that –“ she gestured at the tumbling wreckage, “unless …” She stumbled to a halt when she realized the implications.

  “Someone attacked it in the Dark Between the Stars?” Olivia finished for her. “It blew up in the Dark, and the Portals spat it out?”

  “Which is why we only see the stern,” Adam guessed. “The bow and all the people in it are still in the Dark …”

  “Or blown out through the Portal at Taoan.”

  “But somehow some of the crew survived,” Al Hamra said. “They sent a message to the Ghazali as they came out of the Portal, to warn it.”

  “And the single shot through the bridge was just a by-blow of the battle, a cannon round that came through the Portal with the Zafirah.” Saqr was bouncing in her seat, gesticulating wildly as she put together the last seconds of their doomed ship. “And the Portal is unstable because the explosion of the Zafirah damaged it, which explains the radiation surge.”

  “That means someone was waiting in the Dark Between the Stars to ambush anyone on the path to Taoan,” Al Hamra concluded. “Is that even possible?”

  Saqr shrugged. “Maybe some Faction has a technology we don’t know about. You wouldn’t share it would you? Very useful secret.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Adam interrupted their speculation, shifting uncomfortably in his position against the stern wall of the bridge, “But we should think more tactically. If they have any sense they’ll have someone waiting this side to clean up survivors. Or they’ll be coming through from Taoan soon, to make sure the Zafirah doesn’t send any warnings. We should get clear.”

  “Adam’s right,” Al Hamra agreed with the big man, who was looking at his feet. “If we go back to Hamurabi station they might have someone waiting there. Right now they don’t know we got away. We need to get out of here before anyone comes from in-system or through the Portal. Even if they don’t have ships waiting in-system they might have a squad at Hamurabi station, waiting to finish off any witnesses.” Hamurabi was a large space station deeper in the Hamura system, and in the lead-up to the rescue mission it had been a hive of activity. Anyone could have slipped into the station, and amongst the chaos of ships arriving and leaving it would be easy for an extra squad of small ships to move into place.

  “That means the Portals,” Olivia pointed out, her gaze drawn back to the flickering shadow of the unstable Portal. “It’ll take a day to get to the other one, and there’s someone waiting inside this one.” Most stars in the Third Horizon had two Portals, orbiting precisely half an astronomical unit from the centre of the star and perfectly opposite each other on its equator.

  “The people in there are waiting on the trajectory to Taoan,” Saqr pointed out. “Not to Kua. We could take the Portal to Kua, and they won’t catch us.”

  “Is that how it works?” Olivia asked, frowning skeptically when Saqr nodded confirmation.

  “Can you prepare a route in ten minutes?” Al Hamra asked her, and she looked sharply at him. He pointed behind them, in the vague direction of the Ghazali. “The ship’s going to explode in ten minutes, which will be a huge radiation spike that will cover anything we do in a ship this small. We go into the Portal when it blows, and no one will know we were ever here. No one knows the Beast of Burden was on the Ghazali, it’s unregistered scrap in the hold of a pirate ship. If we’re headed to Kua nobody in the Portal ambushes us because they’re waiting for us to go to Taoan. We sell this ship, split the money and disappear, never speak of this again. No one comes after us because they think we died on the Ghazali.”

  They stared at him, shocked at the audacity of his plan. Finally Olivia drawled, “I reckon you’ve done this sort of thing before,” which drew a sharp look from Adam.

  “Ten minutes? To an unstable Portal? I’ll barely have time to enter stasis, and the trajectory will be ragged. I can’t guarantee we’ll make it.” Saqr’s posture, leaning forward in her seat like a small excited animal, did not indicate that these doubts bothered her in any way.

  “I’ve heard you can get lost in there forever,” Olivia warned, but Saqr waved that away.

  “That’s gravity talk,” she snapped. “Worst that happens is the trip takes longer, or you have bad dreams. In any case, my astrogation’s never that bad.” She looked behind her, gestured to the ship. “Even in something basic like this, without even a shrine to the Icons. I can do it!” She announced finally. “But we have to prep right now!”

  Al Hamra looked around to them, and they all nodded agreement. Faced with a risky jump into the Dark Between the Stars or whatever lurking monstrosity had torn apart the Zafirah, they chose the terrors of the Dark.

  “Very well then,” Al Hamra said, standing up from his chair. “Saqr, start calculating. Everyone else, prep the stasis hold and get in. I’ll come down last with Saqr. We’re going into the Dark.”