Once they were in the back rooms they moved with startling efficiency, so much so that Tonne could hardly believe that these were the same people that were cracking jokes just moments before. But then again, he thought, perhaps that was just why they were so efficient. If they weren't, there would be no more jokes to be made.

The three of them split off from Skreem and Gurgaston, who took a right into the main rooms of the temple back, whilst they ducked down a rotten doorway into a channel that fed down crooked steps long since eroded from their original uniformity. Water dripped though cracks in the rock, forming stagnant pools which threatened to take their footing away from under them. Crysis led the way, poking with his torch into each and every recess he could find. Rokoara brought up the rear. She didn't trust him now, and in her position, he'd feel the same.

He'd been used, played for a fool. He saw that now. He thought there might be something there with her, some kind of reward for releasing her, but there was nothing. He'd been a lonely soldier, a sucker for a pretty face and a nice ass, and now he was the ass. The thought of some sort of prize for rescuing the princess had vanished the instant she'd yelled at him and, to his dismay, taken charge.

He thought he'd tag along, get away to the edge of the universe, and live out a life at the top of a little bar somewhere. He'd been forced into the hooded ones cult at gunpoint anyway, a case of the wrong place at the wrong time. That's what happened in Region 64 of Celestria; you kept yourself out of trouble as best you could, but sometimes, trouble came looking for you. He saw something he shouldn't have, and pretty soon he had a smoking muzzle pressed to his forehead with a fairly simple ultimatum. Die here, or work for us.

The dismembered corpse face down in the puddle next to him confirmed his deep suspicion that there wasn't much of a choice to be made.

And now he found himself clambering up a rock face to see if someone small enough could lie there in the dark, unnoticed, and get off a few shots at anyone coming down after them. He rolled in, like a large case on a train's luggage rack above the seats. His arm fell over the edge into free air. 'You could get up here,' he said, 'but only if you were very small. And you'd still have to get down again.'

Crysis nodded, put a hand to his chin, then summoned him back down again. 'Nice idea,' he said to himself.

They proceeded further into the caverns and arrived at a fork in the road. Crysis took out his Halo-Core to call up to the surface for directions. As they waited, Tonne realised that he was starting to get claustrophobic. He'd never considered claustrophobia to be a problem for him; after all, he had spent the last five years on a wreck in the abyssal cluster. There was something about the way the walls were lined with slimy lichen and moss which reminded him that he was in an old, abandoned tomb. Despite humanity's daring to explore the stars, their marvels of manufactured space bases, their 99% use of cremation or, in some cases, liquidisation, of the dead, there was something about the cold, dark earth which sent a shiver through his spine.

'You ok?' Rokoara asked him.

'Yeah,' he said. He wheezed. 'Just feeling a little hemmed in.'

She nodded, smiled, and brushed past him to follow Crysis down the left hand tunnel at the fork. Her horns scraped against the rock and she tapped her thighs as she went. Her enormous bulk blocked out almost all of the light coming back from Crysis' torch.

Tonne sighed. There had been no concern in that question, just the formalities. He resigned himself to knowing that there was no way he'd ever be allowed in to their circle, to the slightest part of their confidence. If they survived, he'd be left at the first port they found and they would take off for the stars once more. He saw himself waving as they boarded a ship to whoever knows where, shrinking, slowly becoming one more twinkling star in the infinite cosmos above.

It was heart-wrenching. He might have helped initially for lust, but for a brief moment he'd thought, hoped, that just maybe, there was space for him.

He pushed himself on after them before the light left completely.

***

The old rooms were empty and boring. Rusted metal boxes lay in the corners, and Skreem split most of them apart with just a slight tug. Nothing but rocks and scrap. Even the bones of the dead had gone to join their ancestors in a heaven of dust.

'We could pile it all up?' suggested Doone. 'Could hide behind it and get off a few shots before moving.'

'You'd get slaughtered,' Skreem said. 'This stuff wouldn't take you breathing on it. You'd need a miracle to get out of the room with all your eyes intact.'

'That's not a problem. My furthest left eye can see in thermal imaging.'

Skreem's pigtails raised themselves, surprised, in order to save her eyebrows the work. 'Really.'

'Yeah sure. And the far right combines with X-Ray vision. I can see Heratrix through the wall there.'

'What's she doing?'

'She's...' Doone put a hand to his mouth and chuckled. 'Holy shit. She's... she's laughing.'

'Now I know you're full of shit,' Skreem said. 'And if she heard you saying that she'd rip out your testicles and feed them to you.'

Doone paled, and it was Skreem's turn to laugh.

They gathered together all the junk they could find and piled it up in a large barrier across the entranceway. Scraps of rotten wood and moss went in along with old metal beams. Doone took a canister for the guns and poured the fuel over it. 'I hope that stuff's flammable,' he said. 'Otherwise it's just something that looks pretty.'

'Burns at 1800 degrees. It'll go eventually.'

'How did you know that?'

Skreem's eyes dropped to the floor and she looked away. 'I've burned some stuff in my time.'

Doone went to inquire further, but the pigtails came up and gave him a warning glance. He kept his mouth shut. They all had secrets buried deep down, but the only one that knew them all was Crysis. That was one of the reasons they turned to him for guidance. Only he understood them all. Skreem, it seemed, had things buried deep down that went beyond the norm.

Then again, he thought as he smelled the fumes of the canister fuel, so did he. He felt the blood pump through his veins, from his heart to his feet to his wrists. It stoked him up like bellows to a fire. It wasn't just their lives they were keeping safe, it was their sanity. Saving themselves so that, one day, they might come to grips with whatever they were keeping hidden from one another. Surely dying with a clear conscience, no regrets and nothing left incomplete, was the only goal worth living for.

There was a buzz from his Halo-Core. He clicked it. 'Doone.'

'Picked up a fleet of ten ships emerging from cold warp,' Heratrix said. 'They'll be here in thirty minutes. Crysis says for a regrouping up top.'

'Got it,' Doone said. He turned off the Core. Put his arm around Skreem's shoulders. 'Let's go shoot some assholes, shall we?'