“The atmosphere is really bad, total life-support failure as far as I can make out . . . I’m gulping oxygen from an emergency helmet . . . Get that airlock connected now . . . This is killing my lungs . . . I can smell some kind of plastic burning . . . Acid gas . . .”

“I can’t cycle the cabin atmosphere for him,” Erick datavised to André. “Our pumps are working and the hose seals are confirmed, but the spaceplane pressure valves won’t open, there’s no environmental circuit.”

“Get him into the airlock, then,” André said. “But don’t let him into the life-support cabin, not yet.”

“Aye, aye.”

“Come on!” Brendon shouted.

“On our way, Brendon.”

Bev ordered the airlock tube to extend. The spaceplane’s fuselage shield panel slid back to reveal the circular airlock hatch below.

“Lucky that worked,” Erick muttered.

Bev was staring into the AV pillar’s projection, watching the airlock tube seal itself to the hatch rim. “It’s a simple power circuit. Nothing delicate about that.”

“But there’s still a supervising processor—Hell.” Environment sensors inside the airlock tube were picking up traces of toxic gases as the spaceplane’s hatch swung open. The console holoscreen switched to a camera inside the metal tube. A curtain of thin blue smoke was wafting out of the hatch. A flickering green light shone inside the cabin. Brendon appeared, pulling himself along a line of closely spaced grab hoops. His yellow ship’s one-piece was smeared with dirt and soot. The copper-mirror visor of the shell-helmet he was wearing covered his face, it was connected to a portable life-support case.

“Why didn’t he put his spacesuit on?” Erick asked.

Brendon waved at the camera. “God, thanks, I couldn’t have lasted much longer. Hey, you haven’t opened the hatch.”

“Brendon, we have to take precautions,” Bev said. “We know the invaders can sequestrate people.”

“Oh, sure, yes. One moment.” He started coughing.

Erick checked the environmental readings again. Fumes were still pouring out of the spaceplane cabin; the airlock tube filters could barely cope.

Brendon opened his visor. His face was deathly white, sweating heavily. He coughed again, flinching at the pain.

“Christ,” Erick muttered. “Brendon, datavise a physiological reading please.”

“Oh God it hurts.” Brendon coughed again, a hoarse croaking sound.

“We’ve got to get him out,” Bev said.

“I don’t get any response from his neural nanonics,” Erick said. “I’m trying to datavise them through the airlock tube’s processor but there isn’t even a carrier code acknowledgement.”

“Erick, he’s in trouble!”

“We don’t know that!”

“Look at him.”

“Look at Lalonde. They can build rivers of light in the sky. Faking up one injured crewman isn’t going to tax them.”

“For God’s sake.” Bev stared at the holoscreen. Brendon was juddering, one hand holding a grab loop as he vomited. Sallow globules of fluid burped out of his mouth, splashing and sticking to the dull-silver wall of the tube opposite.

“We don’t even know if he’s alone,” Erick said. “The hatch into the spaceplane isn’t shut. It won’t respond to my orders. I can’t even shut it, let alone codelock it.”

“Captain,” Bev datavised. “We can’t just leave him in there.”

“Erick is quite right,” André replied regretfully. “This whole incident is highly suspicious. It is convenient for somebody who wants to get inside the ship. Too convenient.”

“He’s dying!”

“You may not enter the airlock while the hatch into the spaceplane remains open.”

Bev looked round the utilitarian lower deck in desperation. “All right. How about this? Erick goes up into the lounge and codelocks that hatch behind him, leaving me in here. That way I can take a medical nanonic in to Brendon, and I can check out the spaceplane cabin to make sure there aren’t any xenoc invaders on board.”

“Erick?” André asked.

“I’ve no objection.”

“Very well. Do it.”

Erick swam up into the empty lounge, and poised himself on the ladder. Bev’s face was framed by the floor hatch, grinning up at him. “Good luck,” Erick said. He datavised a codelock at the hatch’s seal processor, then turned the manual fail-safe handle ninety degrees.

Bev twisted round as soon as the carbotanium square closed. He pulled a medical nanonic package from a first aid case on the wall. “Hold on, Brendon. I’m coming in.” Red environmental warning lights were flashing on the panel beside the circular airlock tube hatch. Bev datavised his override authority into the management processor, and the hatch began to swing back.

Erick opened a channel into the lounge’s communication net processor, and accessed the lower deck cameras. He watched Bev screw up his face as the fumes blew out of the open hatchway. Emerald green light flared out of the spaceplane’s cabin, sending a thick, blindingly intense beam searing along the airlock tube to wash the lower deck. Caught full square, Bev yelled, his hands coming up instinctively to cover his eyes. A ragged stream of raw white energy shot along the centre of the green light, smashing into him.

The camera failed.

“Bev!” Erick shouted. He sent a stream of instructions into the processor. A visualization of the lower deck’s systems materialized, a ghostly reticulation of coloured lines and blinking symbols.

“Erick, what’s happening?” André demanded.

“They’re in! They’re in the fucking ship. Codelock all the hatches now. Now, God damn it!”

The schematic’s coloured lines were vanishing one by one. Erick stared wildly at the floor, as if he could see what was happening through the metal decking. Then the lounge lights went out.

“Five minutes until we land at our new drop zone, and the tension in the cabin is really starting to bite,” Kelly Tirrel subvocalized into a neural nanonics memory cell. “We know something has happened to at least five other spaceplanes. What everyone is now asking themselves is, will the extra distance protect us? Do the invaders only operate below their protective covering of red cloud?”

She accessed the spaceplane’s sensors to observe the magnificent, monstrous spectacle again. Thousand-kilometre-long bands of glowing red nothingness suspended in the air. Astounding. This far inland they were slim and complex, interwoven like the web of a drunken spider above the convoluted tributaries. When she had seen them from orbit, calm and regular, they had intimidated her; up close and churning like this they were just plain frightening.

Coiling belts were edge-on with the starboard wing, growing larger as they spun through the sky towards the spaceplane. It was an excellent image, a little bit too realistic for peace of mind. But then the spaceplane’s sensor array was all military-grade. Long streamlined recesses on both sides of the fuselage belly were now holding tapering cylindrical weapons pods—maser cannons providing a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree cover, an electronic warfare suite, and a stealth envelope. They weren’t quite an assault fighter, but neither were they a sitting duck like some of the spaceplanes.

Typical that Joshua would have a multi-role spaceplane. No! Thank God Joshua had a multi-role spaceplane.

Forty minutes into the descent, and already she missed him. You’re so weak, she swore at herself.

Kelly was starting to have serious second thoughts about the whole assignment. Like all war correspondents, she supposed. Being on the ground was very different to sitting in the office anticipating being on the ground. Especially with the appearance of that red cloud.

The seven mercenaries had discussed that appearance ad nauseam the whole way in from the emergence point. Reza Malin, the team’s leader, had seemed almost excited by the prospect of venturing below it. Such adverse circumstances were a challenge, he said. Something new.