Heratrix and Gurgaston were nearly gunned down as they opened the door to the bridge. 'It's us,' Heratrix gasped. Gurgaston collapsed onto the floor.

'He ok?' Rokoara asked.

'I'll live,' Gurgaston managed, which was as good as they were going to get. He found that the ceiling was strangely patterned. Fun to look at.

Heratrix went to the Captain's side. 'What's going on?'

They were slowly powering through a strange nebula that was like a dense, crimson fog. Twinkling lights off asteroids floating past like dream fluff failed to distract from the shadows of thousands of ships. Those with damaged hulls and haemorrhaging fuel were retreating through the murk, undoubtedly for repairs.

'We've come through some kind of personal warp gate or wormhole generator,' the Captain said. 'Untraceable, I should think.'

'Don't worry, Heratrix,' Kriss said, clambering up from the firing bay. 'I've told Skreem to hold station.'

Skreem was silent, eyes peeled and forever watching, fingers on the triggers. Heratrix knew that she wouldn't move until someone pried her from that seat with a crowbar. Adrenaline for Skreem acted like superglue.

'Heratrix,' Rokoara said. 'You think this is their headquarters?'

'Possibly.' The planet they'd met the hoods on had been in the middle of nowhere. They were there to retrieve that, thing, and then clear off. They had about as much interest in that rock as Celestria had in going back into The Blank Space. Nightingale's disastrous and mysterious demise had seen to that.

Perhaps they were in The Blank Space?

'Where actually are we?'

'Not a clue. Ship can't find any coordinates. We're off the grid.'

So it could be The Blank Space. And yet for some reason she thought otherwise. This speculation she kept to herself for now.

'What happened to Durram?' Kriss asked.

'No idea. Sorry.'

He could be with the hoods, or dead. She didn't know. After they had been taken into the web-like ether, they had quietened. Heratrix was sure they had been told to save their energy. There was nothing that the bridge could do now except wait it out and pray for salvation.

'We're being pulled towards something,' Rokoara said, 'it latched onto us as soon as we warped.'

'I'm guessing we're going nowhere friendly,' Skreem said in a small voice below.

Through the mist they slipped, dozens of ships either side, flanking them like an escort. The colours of the fog began to affect Heratrix head and before long she had to slump down on the floor next to Gurgaston. He'd slipped into a light doze, a hand clamped onto his arm. Heratrix reached up to a small first aid box on the wall above them and removed a fresh bandage. She wrapped it around the wound. He'd live, as he'd said.

The ship's humming was the only noise in the silence. Heratrix wondered if they were the only ones left alive that wasn't a hood.

She didn't even know what it was they were after. Crysis hadn't told them. He'd snagged it from that tomb and shoved it into the pouch as the walls had collapsed around them, the great monolithic idol lost in the dust clouds and the falling rock. Usually they went for relics worth enough money to tide them over, but this was something different. From the start, Crysis had maintained absolute secrecy over his source of information, a level of mystery Heratrix had never known. His swagger and confidence usually led him to be completely open, with only an ace or two tucked up his sleeve. This endeavour, however, was virtually hermetically sealed.

He knows what he's doing, she thought. She hoped.

'What's that?' Kriss asked, pointing through the ruby gloom. It looked like a great crab, a massive, hulking shadow with spindly limbs emerging from its bulk, gliding into view.

'I don't know,' the Captain said. He leaned forward, straining to see more clearly. But that's where we're going.'

They drifted like flotsam being gently carried by the current, the ship rocking from side to side as they went. A small ship darted down through the gloom, trailing a fiery mist behind it.

In Heratrix's ears a distant ringing began to swell. She dismissed it as her imagination at first, but when Rokoara and Kriss both rubbed their ears as if to clear them of water, she spoke up. 'You hear it too?'

'It's coming from outside,' Rokoara said. 'Permission to cut the power and see, Captain?'

'Permission granted.'

Rokoara ran her finger over a panel and the light faded. Suddenly there was silence. It was so quiet that Heratrix wondered if that was how death sounded. Silence, save for the ringing.

'It's from outside,' Heratrix.

They listened to it as they approached the shadow, emerging from the gloom slowly and stealthily. Rocky crags jutted out through the bloody smoke like teeth, trying to snag and rip the hull open.

Something crashed under the bridge. 'Fucking hell!' Skreem kicked the wall again. 'That ringing is driving me insane! Someone stop it!'

'You and me both, girl,' Kriss called.

The shape they were heading towards slowly opened its mouth, a shining void beckoning them. It was a great ship or station.

'Is it just me or does that look very Biomech?' Rokoara asked. The hull was plastered with large, slick, frond-like tubes and pipes that lined the maw of the loading bay like quivering bones.

'The hoods can't be biomechs,' Heratrix said firmly. 'Biomechs have been extinct for nearly a century after the Greivstor incident.'

'Greivstor?' Kriss asked.

'A lot of shooting and an exploding planet,' Skreem called. 'Must have been fun.'

'Sounds it,' Kriss said. 'But this doesn't look biomech to me.'

'It does and it doesn't,' The Captain mused. 'It looks like it's been restored.'

Heratrix turned to The Captain, a calm coming over her as his reasoning suddenly clicked in her head. 'You think someone's dragged a massive biomech plant out here and, what? Moved in? Restarted the tech?'

'It would seem to explain it,' The Captain said. 'Why though? I haven't a damn clue.'

'We're about to find out,' Rokoara said. 'Skreem, no shooting.'

The station loomed over them like a presiding judge. A great gun turret following them in. A glob of black gloop dripped in a large bubble off the barrel and into the ether.

They were pulled into the ribbed loading bay. The shutters closed behind them. They were in the belly of the beast.