It resided in a room of its own at the centre of the hex, cut off from the Political Director’s control room and the Executive and enforcers’ quarters by bulkhead doors now tightly closed. Four pillars supported the reactor’s housing, a thick coin of bubblemetal, veined with pipes, from which ducts containing superconductive wiring diverged into the walls. A simple console and screen controlled the reactor itself, while most of the other equipment crowding this room was the tool set for taking the thing apart and performing vital maintenance on it.

Var dropped into a chair facing the console and screen, and started by calling up the menu. Then she glanced round and noticed Carol beginning to remove her helmet.

‘Find some more air,’ she instructed. ‘We won’t be staying in here.’

Carol stared back at her, looking terrified, but she nodded obediently and left the reactor room.

Having used the reactor’s simple menu a number of times before, while doing some work on the old injectors, she keyed through it quickly. This time she didn’t want to shut the reactor down, just cut the power. In a moment she had a schematic of the entire base up on the screen and, using her finger, selected every section of it except Hex Three, hesitating for only a brief moment over Hydroponics. She did not want to give Ricard a place to retreat to, nor think for a moment that she did not mean what she would shortly be telling him. The lights brightened for a second, then settled again. There, it was done, and now the rest of the base lay in darkness. Var used her wrist console to open a channel via the still flashing icon in the bottom corner of her visor.

‘Hello, Ricard,’ she began.

It took a moment for him to respond, and he sounded angry, of course. ‘Really smart, Var. I see they must have missed something during your psyche evaluation.’

‘I don’t think they did,’ she replied. ‘They’ve always been aware that intelligence is not a trait normally found in obedient little drones – but that intelligence is needed in places like this. They just took a calculated risk. However, there was no risk with you, Ricard – they roll your kind off the production line every day.’

‘So rather than surrender yourself to the legitimately established authority here, you’d kill us all.’