She looked away, up at the other end of the locked corridor. Her mind was racing.

‘Listen, you have to get me out,’ said the voice, high with panic. ‘This ship is coming apart. Whatever air we have is not going to last.’

Mersadie looked at the cell door. It was a rust-edged slab of metal. The lock control beside it was a cog-ringed set of slots.

‘Find one of the guards,’ called the voice, as though reading her hesitation. ‘There will be the corpse of one of those bastards somewhere. They had key medallions around their necks.’

Mersadie did not move.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, meeting the gaze of the eye looking through the view hole.

‘Who am I?’ said the voice. ‘I am like you – someone who has spent a long time locked up and doesn’t want to die.’

Mersadie held the gaze. No matter where she was now, the Nameless Fortress that had been her prison had held people who for one reason or another were too dangerous to set free.

A shiver ran through the deck. Metal creaked. Mersadie looked up as the sound ran up and down the passage.

‘This ship won’t last long,’ called the voice. ‘That explosive decompression meant that it’s already taken a heavy hit or been ripped in two. What’s left of it is going to shear apart.’ Mersadie took a step away from the cell door. ‘I can help get us both out.’

‘How?’

‘I know ships. This is a Promitor-class transport. We are in a sub-level two decks down from a hangar bay. I can get us there.’ Another creaking shiver echoed down the passage. ‘Do you want to live or not?’ Mersadie held still for a second, and then she was moving along the tilted corridor, looking in the open cells.

‘Quickly, quickly!’ called the voice from behind her.

There were corpses and bits of corpses in every cell: limbs and bodies piled at the lower edges of the sloping floor. She found the body of a guard wedged in a cell doorway. The heavy hatch had clanged shut like a mouth when the gravity had pitched, mashing the guard against the door frame. She pushed the door wide, and began to feel for the lock medallion around the corpse’s neck. A raw-meat reek was rising in the remaining air. Mersadie tasted bile as her mouth ran with saliva, and fought to keep herself from vomiting. The scars of point-blank shotcannon blasts marked the cell walls, and the body of another prisoner lay sprawled close by.

She stopped, the facts piling up to conclusions in her mind. The guards had been going down the cells, executing the prisoners when the ship was hit. They had been making sure that no one got out, that no one fell into… enemy hands.

‘How long until Horus comes?’

‘He is already here.’