CHAPTER SEVEN

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An hour after they jumped out of the fire and kamikaze attacks of the men in black cloaks saw a relatively small ship, beaten to within an inch of its life and with smoke still trailing out of the back of it, descending from the sky in an ungainly manner that would have made anyone watching it come into orbit and down to dock at a small, unknown port on Androssios I, think that it was crashing. This, of course, is precisely what it was doing.

The dock-mistress watched as the insect-like ship descended through the cloudbank, spiralling like a bird in a death-dive. She saw the lights of the reverse-thrusters come on and heard the grinding and screaming of the ship as it tried to hold itself together and slow its fall simultaneously. She saw it bank up, speed still too fast, aiming for one of the landing bays closest to the molten lake's shore. She braced herself to hear it grind against the ground and waited for it to plough into the shimmering barrier of light on the far side, where the nose would break into a thousand pieces and the whole thing would possibly (very likely in dock-mistress Norra's experience) go up in flames. More than it was already, and that would be a strange thing to see.

She rushed into the main port's building and slammed her hand down on the emergency button. She hadn't seen many ships come into this port as badly damaged as this one coming in now, but being the dodgiest still-legal port on the planet, she had seen her fair share of smuggler vessels come in with fuel streaming out the back and blast holes in the side of the thing. She hadn't ever needed to hit the button though, and she hadn't wanted to then. But the thing was coming in too fast, and if there weren't people out there ready to go in and grab anyone still alive out of the wreckage then she would be witness to a towering inferno on her BAY-7. The wreckage didn't bother her; the lack of people to pay for the damage did.

She heard people under the dock over the intercom suddenly rally into action, the red light swinging around above her. A second later the alarm was sounding all over the port. The ship would clear the barrier on the lakeside, but come down much too fast and break up on the barrier on this side. She could see it all happen.

'About half a minute to impact,' she muttered to herself, already removing her hat to pay her tributes to the fallen, should they not make it. She didn't think they would. She saw the ship try and pull up and stop the manoeuvre, but she knew it would be too late. She didn't know a ship that could do it intact, let alone about to fall apart in mid air.

A massive blast came from the rear of the ship, debris erupting in all directions. She saw smoke trails emerge like tentacles, witnessed the pilot apparently give up, the thing going into an arc to the ground.

Ten seconds later, the ship nosedived into the floor of BAY-7. It completely disintegrated on touch. Someone slammed on the containment field over the top, and a square of light sealed off the top. For a good minute, shrapnel of all kinds rolled and ricocheted around inside the cube of shimmering, Celestrian-Blue energy. The fire soon engulfed it, and when all was a mass of flame and smoke, she turned off the shield.

The figures on the side of BAY-6 sprang into life. She watched them rush over to the remains of the ship like flies to a corpse. The hoses built into the side of the bay activated, water beginning to douse the wreckage. Norra grabbed her jacket off the hanger and jumped onto a Zoomus parked nearby. She fired it up and put her head down, racing over to the bay, pushing the Zoomus than she'd ever taken it in her life. Begga Kurs would kill her if they were dead.

She had barely stopped the Zoomus before she was off it, the thing bobbing away still with the slight momentum. She stood at the side, the flames now extinguished in the five minutes it had taken her to get there.

'Anyone alive?' A woman with short hair almost as red as her skin turned to her, horns itching with the smoke enough for her to scratch them.

'Just sent in the first crew now. I'd be surprised if anyone could make it out of there. If there is, they'll find them.'

'I didn't get notification of them coming in,' Norra said. 'Who do you suppose they are?'

The woman shrugged. 'Not a clue. Ship looked like it was from the outer fringes though, so someone illegal, no doubt. Smugglers most likely. Probably grabbed something from the BIU and made a run for it.'

'And thought The Empire would help them? We've been friends with the BIU for the past few months now, if you hadn't noticed.'

'I had actually,' the woman said, 'but it don't stop anyone from pinching stuff off them for old time's sake, does it?'

'Fucking amateurs,' Norra spat.

She stepped through the doorway in the shield and went into the bay, the smoke mostly blowing off to the right as she entered, towards the lake. They'd better be alive, she thought to herself, disgruntled. 'They'd just better be alive, damn it.'

She stepped into the main section of the ship that was still intact, grabbing one of the masks that was handed to her by a member of the rescue-crew and put it over her face. The acrid stench of burning metal vanished, and the tickle at the back of her throat was soothed. She looked over to see a man with a puzzled look on his face.

'Uffrasir, what's the survivor report?'

'Well, it's a little strange,' he said.

Norra frowned. 'What do you mean? Either there's survivors or there aren't.'

'Well that's just it. There's nobody here.'

'The hells are you on about, man?' Norra asked. She remembered seeing the ship try to pull up, saw the thrusters reverse, everything indicating someone piloting the ship. You couldn't do that remotely, and even if you could, what would be the point in crashing it into a bay that would contain everything?

'I mean no bodies. I tell you, when this ship hit the ground, there was nobody here.'

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