The Abyss of Time

Chapter Nine

     Jack Miller was going to enter the hanger first, but Grey pushed past him. "Wait here a moment," he said. "I'll check to make sure it's... "

     The bullet hit him in the head, blowing out the back of his skull. Jack stared, paralysed with shock, as the security man fell, and then another man was pulling him back into the safety of the access corridor. Behind him men were crying out in fear and running away, but from the hanger bay he heard the sound of cyborgs running towards them. Jack knew that if they ran the cyborgs would gun them down from behind. The only chance they had was to stand and fight.

     There were only half a dozen others who felt the same way, but in the cramped passageway there would have been little that the others could have done in any case. Jack headed back to the doorway, therefore. The natural chokepoint that the cyborgs would have to pass in order to threaten them. He got there just in time. He fired a number of wild shots into the hanger to make the cyborgs hang back, giving the other crewmen time to gather behind him, and then they had a defensible position that the cyborgs would lose people on if they tried to take.

     The cyborgs drew back, commanded by Karalis over their private communication channels, and headed for the nearest of the Beagle class landers. The FitzRoy. Some of them tried to take the captured families with them but more shots came from behind an elevator car, making one of them stagger back as bullets bounced from the plates of armour covering his ribs. The cyborgs abandoned the families, who bolted for the exits in disbelieving relief, and then the seven cyborgs were running in through the lander's airlock carrying the two captured imprinters with them. The outer airlock door slid shut and the lander's external lights came on.

     "Everyone out!" shouted Jack, fearing that the cyborgs might be able to override the hanger's airlock controls and plunge the entire chamber into vacuum.

      The families had already fled, though, all thought of escaping on another lander gone, but from behind the elevator car came a lone security man who ran as if all the demons of Hell were after him. Jack waited until he'd passed him and reached the safety of the access corridor. Then he searched the hanger, looking for anyone else who might be in there. The hanger bay was empty, though, and so he closed the door behind him, making sure the vacuum seals were secure before backing away.

     "Thank God you came!" the security man said, panting with relief. "Thought I was dead, or a zombie, for sure."

     "Dundee!" said one of the security men who'd followed Jack from the armoury. "What were you doing in there?"

     "The Exec sent me to destroy the imprinters on the landers," Dundee replied. He grinned with pleasure and pride. "I got them all."

     "Doesn't matter," said the first guard. "They've got the two imprinters from engineering."

      Dundee stared in shock, looking deflated, and Jack put a hand on his shoulder. "You still did great," he said. "You did the job Dad asked you to do and you helped save the people they'd captured. They've got imprinters, they can make Conversion machines, but they've got no-one to convert."

     Dundee nodded gratefully. "Dad?" he asked.

     "The Exec's my dad."

     "Oh."

     Jack laughed and patted him on the shoulder again. "Come on," he said. "Let's make sure they really are leaving."

     He led his small force of men along the corridor and up a flight of steps to the observation deck where large windows gave them a view across the entire hanger deck. They arrived in time to see ceiling winches reach down to the FitzRoy and lift it from the deck. A hatch under the lander then opened and the winch lowered the lander into the top of the football pitch sized airlock. The winch then detached itself, retreating back to the ceiling, and the hatch closed.