A click, then a run of light taps sounded overhead.

Jinx stopped, bracing a hand against a bulkhead of the Xykeree ship, her heart pounding. Beyond her scanner's light, darkness hung heavy with moisture and the smell of rot. The ship's drone—electricity or alien communications—pulsed, rising and falling with the activity she heard.

The knowledge she was not alone was like spiders on her skin.

She'd had an escort of no fewer than three Xykeree since she'd left Olsen and Rolli at the airlock. Right now, close to the main hold and the barge's starboard shuttle bay, she had more. Her scanner showed her dozens of life signs. Scuttling sounded everywhere—overhead and down side corridors. The aliens were staying back, remaining wraiths in the periphery of her vision, but priming weaponry whined in the darkness.

Her presence was barely being tolerated.

A glint of red.

Her heart rate rocketed. Centimetres from her nose, a nearly invisible beam turned moisture in the air brilliant. Laser bloom. The atmosphere in the ship was damp enough to reflect the thin stream of light.

It was a guide beam. Non-lethal.

But it meant a weapon was trained on her.

She backed up a few steps. On the edge of her scanner's light, the andropod sidled down from the darkness, reinforcing the targeting beam's warning.

She was being herded. Had been since she'd started her inspection. Eight goddamn minutes and counting.

Unable to focus enough to bring up a mental picture of the barge, she accessed the schematics on her com and plotted a different route to the main hold. Through nerve-racking trial and error, she'd discovered certain parts of the ship were off limits: a number of auxiliary storage spaces, the medical facilities, and now the corridor outside the starboard shuttle bay. She'd had to skip dozens of checks. Her med bay assessment had been a skim of the inventory list—a stream of alien glyphs.

But she no longer cared what the aliens were hiding.

She continued toward the hold, repressed panic and the barge's stench threatening to close her throat. No air, like in her nightmares. Her head throbbed with the effort to suppress her recall. Whispers rose—unintelligible, agitated. Bloody images flickered. Sensations from her dreams—desperation, pain—turned her pulse ragged.

A chill touched her nape, a phantom breath at odds with the humidity.

She swung about.

Nothing. Nothing but black air and damp, alien res-plex.

But she could have sworn something had been right behind her.

She was a hair's breadth from losing it.

Pressing a hand against her heart, she checked her scanner and gave herself a reality check. The ambient temperature was still reading twenty-eight degrees Celsius. The malfunctioning ES was probably causing odd airflows. The closest life form was six metres away. In fact, most of her creepy company was...

Her pulse jumped back up a gear. Many of the life forms around her were heading away from her location. Rapidly.

She looked up; listened to the clatter of racing feet. Dozens of exskels retreating higher into the ship.

Her own need to leave escalated. Her priority scans were complete; the vessel posed no immediate environmental threat to the port. She'd have headed directly for the exit, except she wasn't sure how the Xykeree would react to her ditching the inspection. Numerous targeting lasers had been aimed at her over the last few minutes. She'd got the impression it wouldn't take much for one or more of the crew to slip their hive's leash. She was human—past prey and an old enemy.

That minute, the words of the Arterus Treaty felt as empty as the void.

She forced herself forward, keeping one eye on her scanner's life readings. She'd eyeball the hold. Then she'd be close to time. The Xykeree would have to let her leave.

Laser light glinted down side passages as she passed. More skittering sounded—along with the hum of weaponry.

She gritted her teeth, shoulders hunching. The thought of clearing the barge for repairs and port access, of allowing ship techs like Soh on board, made her gut lock.

For the hundredth time, she cursed the port's management for letting the EDIS com slide off the maintenance schedule. The tech, an extra-dimensional intraspace relic from the war, would have done more than merely act as another coms node in the sector's sparse FTL communications network. It would've allowed near instantaneous communication with advisors in the next star system via the military's and government's more sophisticated systems. Without it, the only way to relay communications was to send a high-warp courier drone or ship to the nearest coms node, close to Feuria, the starsec's centre for government.

Feuria was a good two weeks' travel away at max standard warp. At high warp, the journey would still take days, if not a full week, given the ships Tirus 7 had on hand. If things got messy—if someone got themselves shot or digested in a roach larder—backup would be a long time coming.

Spotting the wet, glistening black of the hold's internal doors, she let out a breath and hurried towards them. Four more minutes and she'd be out of the horror house. Two minutes twenty more for the airlock to cycle and she'd be back on A-Deck and able to punch Dem for assigning her this inspection.

Stepping into the hold, she found more oppressive darkness. The ship's creaking noises rang hollowly. According to the ship's schematics, the chamber was big enough to accommodate ground transport vehicles and specialised infantry exskels—the spider-like huntsmen and tank-sized scorps Rolli had been so fascinated with.

Her light touched the closest stores. Dozens of crates. They appeared to be the first in long rows of supplies. Bins of plastic-wrapped inorganic waste awaiting recyce and machinery sat against one wall. A typical hold.

Her scanner's screen blinked, its readouts adjusting for the new environment. Glancing down, she willed the device not to detect anything that would need investigation.

Multiple points on a circular graphic. Ten stationary life signs ahead of her in addition to those that remained at her back, out in the corridor.

Jinx eyed them, noting their locations—spread throughout the chamber. Protocol said she should do whatever was necessary to confirm all supplies were legit and that none would cause the port problems. If this were any other inspection...

A new spike on one of her scanner's graphs.

Combustion residues.

She stared at the readings—debated whether to acknowledge them. After a long moment, she swore and looked for the source of the residues.

Faint scorch marks fanned out near her feet. A res-plex bulkhead and a few crates nearby showed signs of deformation. Heat scarring. Fire damage.

Nothing she wanted to see.

It was the first visual evidence she'd found of any problems on the ship.

But it was trivial in the scheme of things; a few melted crates weren't going to cause the port problems.

However, plex in all its various forms was a tough, stable compound. Minor as the damage was, something with a lot of energy had to have been involved. There were also signs of impact damage and blackened debris. Fine metal and composite fragments lay embedded in crate surfaces. More gleamed in nearby bulkheads.

There'd been an explosion.

Jinx skimmed her torch's light over the closest crates, trying to identify their contents. A storage or materials handling error was a possibility—one relevant to her inspection. It was also more likely than the other explanation that came to mind.

Internal weapons fire.

The barge was well-shielded, heavily armed, and crawling with weaponised cyborgs. No matter what the roaches claimed about being attacked, there was no way some predator crew had breached the hull or a hatch and fought their way to the main stores. And why would they attack a military vessel at all? Pirates were sly cowards. They wouldn't take on a battle barge even if they were flying high on mind stims or desperate for a score.

Jinx brought up a few reports from her scanner. She'd run most scans blindly, aiming to retrospectively analyse the results. Skimming the data now, she looked for evidence of explosives, and found it—all throughout the vessel. However, the traces were typical for an operational military vessel and didn't indicate an onboard detonation.

She exhaled. Anyone taking on a roach ship would have armed themselves with bad-ass explosive tech. That there was no evidence of its use backed up her accident theory. Also, some of the residues were consistent with battery and fuel cell components. Given the material mix of the debris, it was possible an exskel had suffered a catastrophic malfunc—

A whisper of cold air across her neck.

Jinx pivoted—felt the ship's drone surge.

At the door, something—an upright body; dark, dully metallic—stepped away from her scanner's light.

She jerked back.

Something had been watching her—had got way too close while she'd checked her reports.

Not the andropod. Some other weird exskel.

Pictures of different alien exoskeletons flashed through her mind. She rejected them. She didn't need to know what stalked her. If the crew were getting curious—bolder—she needed to goddamn leave.

Tension crawled up her back as she moved toward the exit. Her scanner still registered a life reading near the door. Her unwanted company hadn't gone far. Keeping her steps slow, she gave the alien plenty of time to back the hell off.

The ship's electric hum swelled. The ache around her eyes turned into a full-blown migraine—awful, clawing pain. A horribly familiar dizziness hit.

She grabbed a crate for balance, but the hold—reality—fell away.

A storm of images and sounds. But not war footage or recalled dreams this time.

Old memories.

They swamped her, each punctuated by a stab of pain. Her father bloodying his fists on a hospital viewing wall. Her mother ranting about having the man she'd married wiped out by drugs and surgery; her relief at signing over all carer rights and medical bills to a research clinic.

Lorgor's disease: rare, hereditary, degenerative.

Jinx cursed and willed herself to stay upright. Why the hell was she thinking about this now? Dead bodies and cyborg bugs she could have understood; her recall was contextual. But this? Goddamn it. Was she having a stroke? It felt like blades were being driven into her.

Darker images abruptly flickered to life, forcing themselves into the stream of childhood memories. Remembered hospital visits twisted, became scenes of horror.

A row of emaciated bodies—four of them hooked up to tubes. Needles piercing flesh.

Her recurrent nightmare returned.

Desperation—fury. The struggle to breathe, to reach...

A loud whine shattered the hallucination. Reality snapped back—darkness, the wretched smell of decomp.

Jinx wheezed and collapsed against the crate beside her. Tightening her grip on it, she anchored her senses. But recalled horrors and whispers still threatened.

Heart hammering, she concentrated on the sound that had pulled her back. Mechanical and electrical. It sounded like a ship system initiating.

A clunk deep in the hold. Something striking the deck—hard.

She blinked, clearing her vision, and pushed upright.

Another impact sounded, then another—each forceful enough to jolt the metal plates under her boots.

All thoughts of her parents, her possible insanity, fled. She checked her scanner—fumbled it.

One of the life signs in the hold had moved, was now three metres closer.

Over the thrum of priming systems, the scrape of metal sounded. Then harsh creaks: struts and joints adjusting under large forces. The darkness shifted.

Became a wall traced with gleaming edges, sparkling with integrated lights.

Recall of a data net photo flashed behind her eyes: lasers lancing through smoke and dust; the ominous silhouette of an armoured exoskeleton with enough fire power to level a city block.

A huge metal and composite scorpion.

Targeting beams flared, swarmed like flies around her. Clanking footfalls sounded—outside in the corridor—retreating rapidly.

Fear roared up. She made to run—

Agony, taking her down to her knees. Demon claws slicing into her brain. Needles piercing flesh.

A scream that tore the mind, not the air—fury that rose to a roar.

A blast of heat and light. Pain. A plunge into suffocating black.