‘Sure thing.’ The cable drew taut, causing the Atn’s body to twist around a little faster, swinging from side to side like a huge ungainly pendulum. Ty kicked himself away from its bulk, and landed against the shaft wall just a moment later.

He felt a powerful tremor rumble through his gloved fingertips the moment they came into contact with the shaft wall. More dust began to slowly billow out from the passageway entrance, as well as from the other passageways both above and below. He noticed a moment later that Cesar’s icon had blinked out. He tried to hail him, but didn’t get an answer.

‘That had to be something big hitting the asteroid,’ said Nancy, sounding panicky. ‘Get to the surface, Nathan, now.’

Ty didn’t bother answering. He summoned a spider and grabbed its handholds. The passageway began to drop out of sight as the machine carried him back to the surface.

Looking upwards, he realized that the launcher’s attitudinal systems were having to fight to keep it in place over the mouth of the shaft. Whatever had slammed into the asteroid might have done so hard enough to increase its otherwise barely perceptible rotation, and the Atn’s inert form swinging about inside the shaft wasn’t helping either. It was then he noticed one of the launcher’s fuel nozzles was firing only sporadically.

‘Cesar? Cesar, can you hear me?’ Ty yelled into his comms, but the other man’s life-support icon stayed dark. Next he tried pinging the Mjollnir, and felt a chill sweat spring up between his shoulder blades when there was no response. He started to wonder just what they were going to find waiting for them up on the asteroid’s surface.

It was possible, of course, that the frigate’s crew were under attack and too busy to reply. It was just as possible that they had already jumped out of the system, and abandoned the outside team. Worse, the frigate might have been destroyed by whatever had hit the asteroid.

He glanced down at Nancy, who was also being carried upwards by a spider, and tried to think of something he could say that might make both of them feel better. He drew a blank.

‘Nancy, if something’s happened to Cesar, I don’t know how to fly the launcher.’

‘Let me worry about that.’

Ty glanced at his visor’s life-support indicators. They each had about half an hour’s oxygen supply left.

The Atn was finally drawn inside the rear cargo hatch of the launcher, the craft veering to one side as the Atn crashed into its interior bay. Its boosters cut out a moment later.

‘Don’t worry,’ Nancy said quickly. ‘I just took control of the launcher.’

Ty released the spider’s handholds, letting his own momentum carry him towards a set of rungs fixed to the launcher’s exterior.