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Chapter 4:
Shadow Play

Fiona automatically moved out of the way at the sound of feet slapping the decking behind her. Neva and Alouette jogged past, following the endless circle of the crew level hall. A sheen of sweat coated their skin, ivory and chocolate, and they both laughed breathlessly, their eyes sparkling with amusement. Fiona wondered what they had been joking about, and wished briefly that they had asked her to join them.

You're getting bored, that's the problem. After so long fighting, after all the months of hit-and-run attacks, you don't know what to be doing when you've got a moment's downtime.

They were in hyperspace, and although they were hurtling towards a Zat station, at the moment everything was in stasis. There was no changing speed or course once a ship jumped; you just had to ride it out and hope that nothing had gone so horribly wrong that you never came back out into real space. That didn't happen too often, but awareness of that slender chance always lurked at the back of her mind.

Not that there wasn't plenty of work to be had in the meantime. Routine maintenance took up some of the time. There were always toilets to be scrubbed, or filters to be changed, or meals to be cooked. But sometimes there were dead stretches, like this one, where everything that could reasonably be done had been, at least for the moment. Usually that was time for exercise or socializing, but Fiona hadn't yet really made friends aboard, and she felt oddly adrift as she watched the two women vanish around the cylinder's upward curve.

Enough feeling sorry for yourself, lassie. She briefly entertained the idea of just jogging after them; the view would be pleasant, if nothing else. But the ship's medic was obviously sleeping with the captain, and anyway Fiona wasn't entirely sure that she was ready for another relationship after her divorce. She'd received the final papers that severed her marriage to Mary shortly before her capture by the Zats, and the passage of time had only blunted the sting, not removed it.

There were voices coming from the rec room, or what passed for it. The Exile had been cobbled together, converted from a freighter to something less than a warship, and most of the original rec room had gone to form the armory. Which was why Neva and Alouette jogged up and down the halls; there was no space left for a treadmill.

She stuck her head in the rec room, saw Marcus and Juanita working out on the weight set. "Stop being such a baby," Juanita told Marcus cheerfully. He was currently lifting what looked to Fiona to be a prodigious amount of weight, and his face had flushed bright red. "My twelve-year-old cousin could drag that up a mountain and back without sweating."

"Not the only mutant in your family, then?" Marcus gritted out between clenched teeth.

"We breed strong back home. Life is hard! Not like your soft little world, sitting around and sipping tea all day."

There came the soft sound of flesh against the punching bag. Rat glared at it as if it were a real opponent, then delivered a roundhouse kick that sent it to spinning. Sweat clung to his golden skin, sticking his red tank top to his body. Fiona wondered why he chose this sort of exercise, considering that he couldn't fight a real person without hurting himself.

The pilot, Jason, sprawled on the foldout couch, his black hair stiff with dried sweat. He must have been working out earlier, although at the moment he was reading from a tablet. Jasmine sat by him, playing with one of her toys. The entire crew indulged the le-murr terribly, Fiona thought with affection. It was good for morale, to have a companion animal on board.

Jason glanced up at Fiona, his feather earrings swaying with the movement. "Come to spar?"

"Not today. Today I was thinking of a more friendly sort of competition." She crossed to the storage cabinet and pulled out a container. "Who's up for darts?"

"I'll play you," Jason offered.

She grinned. "You're on. Anyone else? Marcus? Juanita?"

"Sure." Marcus put the weights in the rack, then snugged the lock on them closed. Even though there was no changing course or speed in hyperspace, everyone on the Exile kept to good habits, making sure everything was secured at all times. Fiona approved; she'd served on a ship once where the captain had allowed discipline to slip in hyperspace. The crew hadn't been quite thorough enough when preparing to come out into real space, and one of them had been badly injured by an unsecured coffee cup smashing into his head during deceleration.

"Captain?" Fiona rattled the darts in Rat's direction.

He gave her a slight smile. "I'm not really one for games. I'm not very competitive."

"Just afraid of losing to me, that's all," Marcus said smugly.

Fiona grinned. "You going to be putting up with that sort of talk, captain?"

He punched the bag once last time, then sighed. "I'll play."

While Marcus marked off the oche, Fiona pulled out some of the smooth, fluted darts from the container. Each had a small magnet in the tip to make them adhere to the board on the wall. "Shall we be playing for chores, gentlemen? Loser has to clean the chemical toilets?"

Juanita snickered from where she watched by the weight set. "She's playing you. Going to find out she was all-system champion or something."

"Just the local pub," Fiona said with a wink as she stepped up to the line and took careful aim. The last time she'd played had been in a cave on Waga Chun, passing the time while hiding out from the Zats with her fellow resistance members. Their board had been part of a tree trunk with rings crudely cut into it, and their darts whittled by hand, with metal points to bite the wood.

The board lit up and chimed when the first dart struck; not a bad throw, but not the best, either. She finished off with two more throws, slightly better than the first, then bowed Jason into place. The pilot did well, hitting one bull's-eye and putting the other two in the next ring out. Marcus' aim was off on the first throw, then improved, tying him with Fiona.

"Look's like Jason's the man to beat," Fiona said, passing the darts to Rat.

Rat nodded soberly, and she wondered why he seemed so serious. It was just a game, after all.

He stepped up the line, flicked his dreads out of his face with a short snap of his head, and focused on the board. For a long moment, he was simply still, weighing the dart in his right hand, the other two ready in the left.

There was a blur of motion. The board squawked, perhaps programmed to think that the three hits clustered in the bull's-eye must have come too fast to have been real throws.

Rat stepped away from the line, met Fiona's shocked gaze. He gave her a half-shrug, one shoulder lifting almost apologetically. Then he walked past, heading out the door without a word. Jasmine abandoned the couch to bound after him.

Damn.

"Well, then," Marcus said cheerfully. "Best two out of three?"

*   *   *

"Hold for drop," Jason advised. "In ten...nine..."

Neva took a deep breath and braced herself for the disorienting sensation of reentry into real space. Her eyes locked onto scan; the instant they had beacon, she had to be ready to report any danger that might be awaiting them at Outpost 56-G, Sector 3. The Exile had visited Zatvian-held stations before, usually disguised as an ordinary freighter. Then, however, their only purpose had been to do a bit of trade and maybe pick up some intel. Not try to locate a super-soldier, somehow manage to subdue her, and get away with her without being caught or killed.

One step at a time. Static flared across her boards as the ship transited back to normal space, and her stomach insisted that the universe had just fallen out from beneath her. "Hold for braking," Jason called, and the safety web tightened around her as the ship shed v.

"We've got beacon," Neva reported. Scan firmed up, displaying the system and its outpost. It had been nothing but a mining operation with a station, although the intel they'd gotten at Waga Chun suggested that the military had taken advantage of the outpost's insignificant status to install secret labs. What the Zats were up to in those labs remained a mystery, but whatever it was, it was high enough priority to rate a Fury for protection.

The station showed as expected on her boards, as did the massive red star. Asteroids ringed the inner reaches, and a few dead worlds circled farther out. Other than that, all was quiet.

"There are no ships, except the ones at dock," Neva said, not sure if she should be alarmed or not. She couldn't recall ever coming into a system with nothing else moving.

"That's being damned odd," Fiona murmured.

"Zats are probably flying around off the beacon," Marcus growled. "Sneaking around, waiting for some fools to show up and fly right into them."

"And why would they be doing that, in their own system? Unless they're expecting attack."

"Neva, ping the system," Rat ordered. "Give us everything. If Control asks what we're doing, we'll tell them we're having problems with our beacon reception."

Neva switched to active scan and anxiously watched the boards. There was a limit to its accuracy, but within that range, no off-beacon ships appeared. "Nothing."

She spared a glance at Rat, saw that he looked worried. "Fiona, shunt com to my board."

"Done."

Rat cleared his throat, and Neva remembered how calm and cool their previous captain had been when it came to deception. Then again, she had more practice at it. "This is Captain Wu Zhen of the freighter Esmeralda. What's your status, Control?"

A lag time clock went up on the mains, counting down the minutes it took for their transmission to reach the station, and how long it would take for station control's reply to reach them. When the clock first went into the negative, Neva didn't worry. Even a well-staffed station might take awhile to get back to a ship's query.

Even if it's the only ship moving in the system?

After a lingering silence, Jason said, "Maybe everyone is on coffee break."

Marcus laughed, but no one else did. "Something's wrong here," Alouette said. Her boards were next to Neva's, and they exchanged a worried look.

"Looks like it," Rat agreed. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes. "Nothing can ever be simple, can it?"

"Do we abort?" Alouette asked--hopefully, Neva thought.

"We can't just run off because the Zats are asleep at their boards!" Marcus objected.

"I don't think it's that," Jason said. "Alouette is right--something is wrong here. We need to be cautious."

"Marcus is right, too," Rat said. "We're here for the Fury--that hasn't changed. Unless we find out that she isn't here anymore, this station is still our destination, no matter what else is going on. We'll just have to go carefully and keep someone on scan and on com at all times. If there's been some sort of attack against the station, it should be obvious once we get close enough."

"Raiders?" Neva asked, remembering their own encounter.

"Damned bold raiders to take on a station," Fiona said.

"We don't know enough to guess." Rat shook his head. "Jason, pick what seems the best lane and send us in, just like everything was normal. Neva, finish out this shift on scan, then switch with Juanita. Fiona and I will monitor com. Everyone else...just be ready. For anything."

*   *   *

It took them seven shifts to reach the station. Although Rat knew that caution was warranted, and that there was no sense rushing into a situation they knew nothing about, he was also painfully aware that every passing shift wound the crews' nerves tighter and tighter. The station remained obdurately silent, even when Rat set com to send an auto-hail every few minutes. Perhaps if there had been some obvious reason for the silence...but there was nothing, even when they drew near enough to get a more detailed look at the station. It spun lazily, back-lit by the red sun, without any sign of damage their scanners could detect. Three ships were clamped to its docking ring, all Zat military models, but none of them responded to a hail either.

Speculation was rampant, although most of the crew kept it to themselves. The whispers took on a strained quality that made them more difficult than usual to ignore, growing louder and louder as apprehension set in.

*a trick, must be, some kind of Zat game (anger, hate, worry, fear)*

*disease maybe, not easy to detect unless you know what you're looking for, load us all up with antibots just to be safe*

*filters gone bad, life support (horror) get the air full of CO before they knew it*

The shift before they were set to dock, Rat called a meeting in the galley. No one looked like they'd been sleeping well, their eyes shadowed with darkness and tempers getting short. He got the coffee brewer going, but Juanita waved him away, getting out the cups and pouring. He murmured thanks when she passed him a cup, and wrapped his hands around its warmth, trying to find some comfort in it. Jasmine climbed into his lap and sniffed the cup warily. *acid-smell (don't like)*

Rat cleared his throat, and everyone looked at him. Expecting him to have answers, to tell them what to do, and he felt again a twinge of fear, that he would end up getting everyone killed. "So. Station is still not talking to us, but from the outside everything seems all right. I think we should try to dock, if that's feasible. Jason?"

Jason nodded confidently. "I can do it. We won't be able to hook up umbilicals without station cooperation, though."

"I don't think we'd want to, not without knowing what's going on. We're going to be as careful as we can with this. I'll ‘suit up and take a scanner with me onto the dock, assuming we can get the tube rigged up. That way we can be sure that the air's not bad, and we'll only be risking one person."

"No. I'll go," Juanita said. Her dark eyes were serious, but one corner of her mouth quirked up into a wry smile. "Stupid to risk the captain--better to send someone who can take care of herself."

"You just want to get out there and smoke one of those damned cigarillos," Marcus growled. "I'll go."

"Juanita can go," Rat said firmly. "And if the air's clean, she can smoke all she wants. Assuming there aren't any station authorities around, anyway. Hopefully, there will be, though. Maybe we won't even have to risk anything--someone might be waiting on dock to tell us there's been some sort of massive failure of the communications array, and everything else is normal."

Fiona tipped her chair back, eyeing him skeptically. "That's not being too likely, begging your pardon, captain."

"I'm aware of that. And I agree that we should be prepared for the worst. If we dock, and there's still no sign of anyone, we'll test the air first. Whether or not it's clean, we'll sweep the station, starting with the docks, until we find someone. Jason, I want you to stay on board, just in case something goes horribly wrong. If the Zats--or anyone else--makes a hostile move towards the boarding party, you can pull out and threaten the whole station with the guns easily enough. Neva, you stay on the ship as well. There's a chance that there are injured or sick people on the station, and I want you to get ready to treat them. Or us, if it comes to that."

She nodded. *makes sense but I hate waiting (worry) can't know what I'll need until we know the situation, (annoyance) don't like it*

"The rest of you will board with me. Any questions?" There came a general shaking of heads, and he felt relief, that no one seemed to think his plan was either stupid or unnecessarily dangerous.

Marcus sipped his coffee. "I'll make sure the guns are all at full charge, shall I?"

"Yes. Hopefully we won't need them."

Marcus didn't deign that bit of wild optimism with a reply.

*   *   *

Docking took longer than usual, without any feedback from the station, either voice or data. From what Neva could tell, Jason seemed utterly unperturbed by the procedure, and she wondered if he had done unassisted docks before, and under what circumstances. Certainly they couldn't have been any stranger than these.

"We're clamped on," Jason reported as the clang rang through the hull. Normally this would be followed by an even louder clang, as the station's own clamps latched on, but this time there was only silence. "We're going to have to manually extend the tube, though."

"Marcus and I will ‘suit up and take care of that," Rat said, unlatching his safety web and rising to his feet. "Neva, will you show Juanita how to work the scanner?"

She unlatched and followed Rat and Marcus to the lift. Juanita waited for her on crew level, and followed her to the infirmary, while the two men went to put on their ‘suits.

Neva pulled the scanner from its compartment and showed Juanita the display. "This will measure atmospheric levels--percentage of carbon dioxide and monoxide, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. If something's gone wrong with life support, we ought to know pretty fast."

Juanita nodded. "Got it."

"It's also calibrated to sample for most serious airborne illnesses."

The big woman paled slightly, and nervously plucked at the shawl around her shoulders. "Most?"

Neva shrugged. "The problem is, to detect something, you have to know what you're looking for to start with. Not to mention that bacteria, and especially viral agents, are pretty small, so unless there's a sufficient amount of them in the air, an older scanner like this isn't going to pick them up easily. I wouldn't worry, though--if the air is good otherwise, that probably means the filters are fine and will be taking care of any contaminants as usual."

Juanita nodded, but she still seemed uneasy. Neva didn't blame her.

After Juanita ‘suited up, Neva went down to the spine with her, in case things on the dock went disastrously wrong and someone ended up needing emergency aid. As they approached the airlock, it opened and Rat and Marcus came out, pulling off their helmets and revealing sweat-matted hair.

"Got it," Rat panted. "We'll have to cut open the station-side lock, though."

Marcus had brought a cutter, which he passed to Juanita. "You know how to use that without breaching the hull?" he asked.

She waved him off. "Yes, yes. You worry too much."

"Stay in constant contact," Rat ordered. "If anything goes wrong, we'll be there to back you up in seconds."

"You worry too much, too." Juanita caught Neva's gaze and rolled her eyes. "Men, huh?"

Neva wasn't feeling very sanguine herself, but she managed a grin.

Juanita pulled on her helmet, then hefted the cutter. "I'll get to work, yes?" Striding to their lock, she cycled through, and was gone. Marcus stared after her, as if he could penetrate the hull with his gaze.

Rat thumbed the com on his ‘suit's helmet. "Fiona?"

"Aye, captain?"

"Put Juanita on allship."

"Yes, sir." There was a moment's pause, then the whine of the cutter sounded over the com, a hideous screech that made Neva grit her teeth. A moment later, it dropped considerably in volume. "Sorry about that. It's being filtered now."

"Thanks," Rat muttered, rubbing at his ear.

They settled in to wait, Rat and Neva crouching on the floor, Marcus leaning against the wall. The whine of the cutter seemed endless, and Neva was beginning to wonder if they would be able to get through, when it suddenly stopped. "I'm through the inner lock now," Juanita reported.

"Be careful," Marcus said, straightening.

"I am. No one waiting on the outside, at least." There came a pause. "No movement on the docks."

"I'm not liking this," Fiona said over com. "No matter how crippled this station is, someone should have noticed a ship docking, let alone damaging their airlocks."

"Agreed." Rat rose to his feet, shifting back and forth uneasily. "What's the scanner say, Juanita?"

There came a long moment of silence, then: "Oxygen within normal tolerance. Carbon dioxide and nitrogen are a little high, but nowhere near the red zone. Getting some traces of ammonia, but nothing to worry about."

Rat glanced at Neva, and she frowned slightly. Something about the mix Juanita described sounded familiar. "It should be safe to breathe," she said finally.

"Good. I'm taking off this stupid helmet, then," Juanita said. "Feel like I'm suffocating in this thing."

Rat winced. "Juanita, be careful."

"I'm always careful." There was a pause, then Juanita's voice came again, sounding distant now that she had removed her helmet. "Something's dead in here. Not nearby, but I caught a whiff."

Fear skated down Neva's spine. "That explains the readings. The filters are still working, but there's enough decomposition for the scanner to detect the out-gassing before it gets sucked into the intake."

"Wonderful," Marcus muttered.

"I'm going to find out what's dead," Juanita said.

What seemed like forever passed, although it was probably only a few minutes. Then Juanita's voice came over com again. "Hey, Neva?"

"Yes?"

"Not going to need you for this one. He's been shot. Brains all over the cargo containers."

"Self inflicted?" Rat asked.

"Don't see a weapon. Guessing somebody else did him in."

"Christ, get off the dock, then, woman!" Marcus snapped. "What if they've got you in their scopes right now?"

"Been a few days since this one died. Be glad you can't smell him."

"Marcus is right," Rat said. "Fall back now, Juanita. We've got some decisions to make."

Com crackled. "What are you thinking happened, captain?" Fiona asked.

Rat sighed and slowly sank back into a crouch as they waited for Juanita. "I don't know. There are a lot of possibilities. If word came that Zatvia was destroyed along with all of their high command, fighting might have broken out between different factions hoping to take control of the station. Maybe there were raiders, even though it doesn't seem likely, given that the station isn't damaged."

"Or maybe the Fury was deciding she didn't want to take orders anymore?"

"They don't make decisions, they take orders. The symbiote makes certain of that." Rat kept his eyes averted from Marcus when he spoke, and Neva found herself doing the same. After all, if they were lucky, this was Marcus' daughter they were talking about. "Or that's the theory, anyway. I'm not ruling out that something went wrong with the symbiote, though, and it turned on its creators. Or was unleashed by one faction against another. We don't have enough information to do anything other than speculate wildly."

"So we're going ahead with the plan, then?"

"I don't know that we have any choice."

The airlock cycled, and Juanita came through. She looked a bit pale and sweaty, and Neva thought that the rotting body must have affected her more than she'd let on. When she saw them, however, she gave them all a cocky grin. "So, we take off these bulky ‘suits and put on the armory?"

Marcus laughed. "A woman after my own heart."

*   *   *

Fiona hefted her rifle as they made their way down the boarding tube. This was the first time she'd seen action with her new crew, and a part of her was nervous, even knowing that everyone there had been tested under fire. All of them were as heavily armed as it was possible to be, with guns slung off their belts and rifles in their hands.

The captain had the dubious honor of carrying the tranq gun instead of a real rifle. If the Fury was still on board, and still alive, they'd need something to take her down without killing her, and the tranq was the best they'd managed to come up with. Given that he was the hot-shot sharp-shooter among them, Rat had been the obvious choice.

Better him than me. Fiona preferred to have live rounds between her and anyone trying to kill her.

They paused briefly at the airlock at the foot of the boarding tube, and Fiona and Alouette applied a makeshift patch to the hole in doors. That way, if the Exile did have to make a hasty exit without them, it at least wouldn't expose the dock to open vacuum.

As Juanita had said, the air of the dock contained the faint scent of decay. Fiona had seen her share of dead bodies during her time with the resistance, and it didn't bother her, but she saw that Alouette looked troubled. Marcus' skin seemed to have a faintly green cast, as well, but Juanita's handsome face betrayed nothing.

Rat stood a little apart from everyone else, his amber eyes slightly unfocused and an expression of intent listening on his face. After a while, though, he shook his head. "As far as I can tell, there's no one nearby."

"As far as you can tell?" Marcus asked skeptically.

Rat shrugged and looked irritated. "It's hard to be sure, with all of you so loud. The noise could be covering up fainter whispers."

"Is there anything we can be doing about that, captain?" Fiona asked. She still wasn't sure how comfortable she was with this telepathic business, but it made sense to utilize it as best they could.

"Be calm. Tension makes it all louder."

Marcus rolled his eyes. "Oh, well then, that's all. Just because we're on a deserted dock with no idea what's going on here, there's no reason to be nervous."

"Stifle it, mister," Fiona said sharply. "This isn't the time."

Marcus scowled, but shut up.

"Juanita, show us the body you found," Rat ordered. "Like I said, I don't think anyone alive is on the docks with us, but don't let down your guards. I could be wrong."

They moved across the dock, Fiona and Marcus each keeping a sharp eye on different directions. The dock was neat and orderly, at least compared to some civilian operations she'd visited over the years. They had docked on the opposite side of the ring from the other three ships, and the consoles beside the other airlocks were dark and silent. Red warning lights hung above every airlock, cautioning that there was nothing but vacuum and cold space on the other side. The gantries loomed in the harsh light, casting monstrous shadows against the walls, the capped ends of dangling umbilicals like the mouths of eels. A few berths down, some cargo containers waited for a transport that had never come, and Juanita gestured towards them. "He's there. On the other side."

Holding her breath against the expected stench, Fiona stepped around the pile...and stopped. All that greeted her was decking and containers. No body. No stains on the floor. No bits of skull or brain stuck to the containers. Although the faint scent of decay still lingered on the air, it was no stronger than it had been back at the airlock. "There's nothing here," she said, then felt stupid for stating the obvious.

Juanita frowned, obviously puzzled. "Not possible. He was right there."

Alouette gave her a small, encouraging smile. "You probably just got the different piles of containers mixed up. It could happen to anyone."

Fiona stepped away from the containers and looked up and down the dock. "There's only one problem with that. The rest of the dock is empty."

"Maybe it's further down?" Alouette suggested hesitantly.

"It only took Juanita a few minutes to walk to the body the first time, though," Rat objected. "It had to be close."

"This is it, I'm certain," Juanita said stubbornly. "He was lying right there! Shot in the face! Brains everywhere!"

Rat circled the containers slowly, frowning as he did so. "If Juanita's right--"

"She isn't lying," Marcus snapped.

"--then someone must have removed the body," Rat continued, ignoring Marcus. "And not only that, but thoroughly cleaned the area. And done it between the time it took Juanita to come back aboard, and the rest of us to get armed and leave."

"There's not being any smell of cleaning agents, though," Fiona said, sniffing the air cautiously. "And if the body had been here as long as it sounded, surely we'd still be smelling a lot worse stench than we are now."

"So you think she made it up?" Marcus challenged, his blue eyes hard.

"Of course not," Rat said crossly. "I know Juanita saw it; she's yelling it at me loud enough." He rubbed his temple with one hand, as though massaging away the beginnings of a headache.

Fiona's mouth felt dry, so she unclipped a canteen from her belt and took a drink. "None of this is making any sense. If whoever shot the poor bastard left him here to rot, why would they come and take him off after we'd found him? They might try to hide what's going on here before we found out about it, but after?"

"And why didn't our esteemed captain notice them with his messed-up brain?" Marcus added.

Rat rounded on him sharply. "Shut up! I'm sick of your whining!"

Marcus stared at him, mouth open in a silent "o" of surprise. Then his face hardened abruptly. "Aye, captain."

"Good." Rat hefted his rifle. "Whoever did this can't have gone far. So we're going to find him, her, or them, and get some damned answers."

They set off down the dock at a rapid pace. The place was eerily silent, and in the absence of the normal sounds of loading and unloading, the echo and re-echo of their footsteps sounded abnormally loud. Fiona found herself listening to the echoes; it sounded as though an army marched invisibly beside them.

"There's a door," Alouette said, making Fiona jump. The navigator pointed one brown hand at the expanse of the inner wall; sure enough, there was an access to the rest of the station. "I think if I was trying to hide from us, I would have gotten off the docks as quickly as I could, to avoid being spotted."

Rat nodded wordlessly and made for the door. Marcus and Juanita flanked it as it opened, but no blaze of gunfire met them. There was only an empty hall, black as a pit except where the light of the dock reached in. The captain pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shone it around, illuminating nothing but more corridor

"Is something wrong with the lights?" Alouette said, but she sounded nervous about it herself.

Rat looked grim. "When the Fury attacked back on Far Station, they cut the lights immediately beforehand. The Furies have heat sensors that let them navigate in the dark."

"Wonderful," Fiona muttered. "All right, then. I'll take rearguard if you'll take point."

Rat nodded. "Sounds good. Get your flashlights out."

Five beams cut the darkness as Rat started in. Everyone else fell in behind him; once they were past, Fiona swung into place at the rear of the group. The door shut behind them with an ominous swish.

The corridor curved sharply before it went very far, and for a moment in the dimness Fiona lost sight of the rest of her crewmates. She started to hasten her step, but something made her pause instead. Even though they were off the docks, the echo of footsteps continued from the direction of the door.

Something was coming up in the dark behind them.