Ricard continued, ‘By my estimation, you yourselves must possess some weapons – mostly plastic ammunition and, I see from the base manifest, maybe one seismic charge. You have two choices now. One is that you rebalance the atmosphere in Hydroponics, then, once the bulkhead doors can be opened, you come at us through the adjoining wing – where my men will be waiting for you. Your only alternative is to exit via an airlock and try to gain access in some other way. However, the second shepherd is waiting outside for you, and it is now adjusted for shredding rather than capture mode. You might even get lucky with the one seismic charge you possess, but I doubt that, since our robot is now broadcasting local EM interference so that any radio detonation signal simply won’t work.’

‘What the hell do we do?’ Carol wondered. She sounded weary, and defeated.

‘We don’t have much time,’ admitted Var, at a loss.

‘We can’t take off the head now,’ said Lopomac, ‘but we can still deliver an ultimatum to him and Silberman, and to the remaining enforcers. They’ll have heard Le Blanc’s speech and will know the situation: they can’t run this base by themselves. We demand that they surrender their weapons, and their authority, and that from now on we run this place separate from Earth, and on the basis of the needs of all here. No more political thought police – we can’t survive like that.’

‘Yes, that’s the most logical step,’ said Var, ‘but Ricard won’t see it that way.’ Lopomac was just babbling, just hoping to see some clear way of dealing with this.

‘You’ll have to play the cards you’ve got,’ said Kaskan, who, Var noted, was now holding the seismic charge. ‘There’ll be more weapons available in Hex Three.’

‘Got any suggestions on how we get there?’ Lopomac asked.

Kaskan shrugged, then began walking right across the hex towards the airlock. ‘You cut the power and you threaten to kill them all, thus forcing Ricard and his men to go after you.’

Var just then registered the words Kaskan had used: You’ll have to play the cards you’ve got. He was talking like someone who wasn’t included in their predicament.

‘And kill everyone else remaining on the base?’ asked Carol. ‘You know how fine the dividing line is between unconsciousness and death, once you start running out of air.’ She pointed to the two corpses lying on the floor.

‘Var here has already demonstrated extreme ruthlessness,’ said Kaskan. ‘She’ll surely be able to convince Ricard, then it’ll be a straight fight.’

Var suddenly understood what he was doing.

‘No, Kaskan!’

But he had already opened the airlock and stepped inside.

‘I loved Gisender,’ he called back to them. ‘You’ve no idea how much.’

He closed the inner airlock door.

Argus Station