“You don’t have to join us at the dig site, Lavim,” Al Hamra assured the young man, as he sputtered and cowered in front of them. “We just need your advice about the location and contents.” They were four days into their journey to Rockhome 3, and Al Hamra had gathered them all in the ship’s briefing room to begin assigning tasks for their arrival at the asteroid belt, which was probably only a day’s flight away. Before they left Coriolis they had decided to invite Lavim Tamm to join their crew as a deckhand, partly out of charity for his almost impossible situation and partly because they felt responsible to split the proceeds of their raid on Merez’s office with him, but really needed the money. It was a slightly mercenary decision, but bringing him into their crew filled a position they needed, and enabled them to avoid the sensitive question of how to split the cash they had liberated from their enemies on Coriolis. Lavim Tamm had agreed to work with them, but at the briefing Dr. Delecta had briefly mentioned their plan to visit his former dig site on Kua after they were done with Rockhome 3. His reaction had been visceral.

  Like everything else on the Phoenix of Hamura, the briefing room was a marvel of overbearing luxury. It filled a large portion of the space between the bridge and the living space on the third deck, opposite a small service room, the forward armoury and elevator station. At this point the super-structure widened in a smooth curve outwards from the bridge to the main part of the level 3 deck, which encompassed the docking bay and top-side air-locks, and then their luxury living space. The briefing room nestled in this curving space behind the bridge, its huge floor-to-ceiling window offering stunning views of the starboard bow of their ship and beyond that the Kua system, a smattering of distant glittering planets that stretched across the entire outer wall. The center of the huge room was filled with an imposing dark granite table, surrounded by eight desk chairs and inset with screens, power links and tabula stands. The far wall of the briefing room was graced with a huge stylized depiction of the Last Stand at Odacon, the famous battle that saw the closure of the Portals to the First and Second Horizons and plunged the Third Horizon into the Long Night. This version of the famous painting was embossed on a single plate of metal, a glistening black- and silver-engraved homage to the terrifying events of the star cluster’s past that hung in imposing grandeur over their discussions. Beneath it was a long drinks and service cabinet of the same dark granite as the table, at which Lavim had just been preparing coffee from an extremely expensive dispenser machine. The coffee and some small plates of lokum sweets had been placed out on the table amongst the glowing screens and tabulae when Dr. Delecta let their plans slip and the boy had panicked, backing away to stand defensively beneath the Last Stand. Al Hamra faced him from his position on the far side of the huge briefing table, the entire vista of Kua system’s outer limits and the myriad stars of the galaxy stretched out behind him. Streaks of orange light from Kua’s distant mainstream star fell across the floor near his feet, dimmed automatically by the plexiglass window, and streaked across the slopes of the ship’s outer hull that fell away behind him into the darkness of space.

  “It’s death, I’m telling you!” The boy replied, holding both hands palm forward in front of him. “You mustn’t go! I won’t go!”

  “You certainly won’t be going,” Dr. Delecta assured him from her seat next to Al Hamra. “Your job is to mind the ship when we’re out. You won’t go near anything dangerous.”

  He still shook his head, and Al Hamra followed up on Dr. Delecta’s point. “It will be far less dangerous for us, too, if we have your advice. You can tell us the general layout of the place, and we’ll know what to look for.” He gestured for Lavim to continue preparing the coffee. “Look, you saw the gear you helped Adam load before we left Coriolis, we’re not going in undefended like your previous team, and we know what to look out for. It won’t end the same way.”

  Adam’s contribution had certainly been impressive, after he cut a very good deal with a Syndicate-related weapons dealer. A full crate of Vulcan carbines, some spare pistols, several kits of basic armanite-woven protective clothing, some spare communicators and a couple of portable medkits for Dr. Delecta. He had even bought a sword for Siladan, who revealed he had been a duelist at the Academy, and was mediocre with pistols.

  “We’ll shred anything from the Dark that comes for us,” Adam assured him from his position at the end of the table. He certainly looked the part, leaning back in one of the desk chairs in figure-hugging dhoti and an open caftan, the slabs of muscle on his chest sprawling like huge cliffs over washboard abdominals, flawless desert-dark skin perfectly offset by the golden fabric of the caftan. Even leaning back in the chair he was enormous, dwarfing the unkempt archaeologist who sat in the next chair along and looking far more suited to the single sword he had included in the haul of weapons he brought on board. Now Siladan, rough full beard and dark eyes framed by a yellow guttrah that hung loose around his shoulders, looked like a goblin next to the huge soldier.

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  “We won’t be surprised, and if you tell us the way around we’ll be able to see them coming,” Siladan added. “I know my way around a dig site, Lavim, it won’t be a problem.”

  “You don’t understand these creatures –“ Lavim began, but Adam cut him off.

  “I was built to kill them,” the big man told him, voice firm and certain. “We’ll be fine. You will be fine.”

  Lavim demurred, took his coffee and sat down at the end of the table. “You’ll die down there,” he whispered, but he did not push the topic further.

  “No one is dying, in space or underground or anywhere else,” Al Hamra assured him, and continued with his briefing. He and Dr. Delecta had managed to cut an excellent deal on the spare parts they thought Rockhome 3 would need, and were sure that they would be able to sell them for a significant markup. No emergency messages had been broadcast from the mining colony and in the preparation for their departure they had not been able to identify any other vessels heading to the same destination, or any other major spare part purchases at the same time. It seemed like they had a smooth run to the target.

  “We need to be careful when we arrive,” Al Hamra told them. “If their life support system is worse than we’ve been told they may be desperate, so we should be ready in case they try to storm the ship. I want Adam, Siladan and Olivia in armour with weapons ready. Delecta and I will go down first with just Adam as bodyguard, if things go wrong the rest of you join in. Saqr, you’ll stay on the bridge, ready to get out if we need to.”

  They all nodded agreement, and Saqr spoke. “According to the records at Coriolis they have several space ships, but none of them have come to Coriolis. Seems weird they wouldn’t come looking for parts.”

  “Maybe they’ve been sabotaged too,” Siladan suggested. “Or maybe they’re scared to test them.”

  “Most likely they’re trying to repair the damage themselves,” Olivia said. “Colonies like this are used to solving problems, and they work on really thin margins, not to mention their stupid stubborn pride. They won’t want to pay one birr for anything until they’ve done everything they can themselves, and they’ll suffer bad air and dodgy water for a week or two before they admit defeat.”

  “Which means we’ll be cruising in at the right time. We just go in, sell the parts they need, try to hang around for a day or two in case they discover they need more, and then light out. Easy.” This from Dr. Delecta, who added, “Also, if it looks bad, we should stick around just in case they need evacuation.”

  “It’s possible we get salvage rights if we evacuate them,” Olivia told them, and when Al Hamra looked at her sharply she explained. “Another reason colonists try not to get outside help. There’s weird laws about what happens when a colony collapses, we all have to study them.”

  “We have enough stasis chambers to –“ Dr. Delecta began to say when Saqr interrupted her.

  “Captain, something’s approaching,” the pilot announced. She flicked a gesture over the screen in front of her and a large viewscreen on the wall at the opposite end of the room from the Last Stand at Odacon flickered to life, showing a star map. The small green dot of the Phoenix of Hamura hung in the middle of the screen, grey masses of asteroids scattered across the left hand end of the display and a green arrow on the right hand side pointing back in the direction of their origin point at Coriolis station. Various numbers across the top of the screen flickered and changed, providing them information about their navigational situation. They were approaching the asteroid belt, within which Rockhome 3 was built, and their ship was slowing down as it prepared to enter the belt.

  A small red dot appeared on the screen a long distance ahead of their ship, between it and the belt.

  “Red isn’t good, is it?” Lavim said quietly, and with a gesture Siladan pulled up a second screen next to the first, setting diagnostic systems to work. As the ship’s sensor operator it was Siladan’s job to identify unknown objects.

  “It’s fast,” he told them. “I think it’s a torpedo.”

  “Ki-mada?” Delecta whispered, expressing everyone’s confusion. “Is there some kind of automated defense system out here?”

  “I think it’s pirates,” Siladan told them. He flicked his hands on his screen a little more and a small message box appeared. “Someone’s hailing us captain, from extreme sensor range.”

  “Put it up,” the captain ordered him, and the diagnostic display shivered for a moment before it switched to a grainy, low-resolution video feed. A person in grey flight clothes and an exo-suit helmet appeared in the centre of the feed, the instruments and dials behind them suggesting they were sitting in the bridge of a very small spacecraft.

  “Phoenix of Hamura,” the person addressed them, voice electronically distorted through the helmet and their comms systems. The video image wavered as they spoke, the broadcast attenuated by their distance. “You are speaking to the captain of the attack ship Avernum’s Fall. If you jettison your cargo and turn about I will deactivate the incoming torpedo. If you do not comply, you will be destroyed. Give me your response immediately.”

  They looked at each other in shock. Pirates? This close to Coriolis? Al Hamra took in their expressions and gestured for Siladan to open the comms link.

  “Avernum’s Fall? This is Al Hamra, captain of the Phoenix of Hamura. Fuck you. We will consign you to the Dark.” He gestured to Siladan to cut off the link, and then addressed his crew.

  “Battle stations, Firebirds!”