‘Faster, faster!’ came the voice down the corridor. The walls were creaking. A pipe burst beneath the floor grating. Steam billowed into the corridor. Her hand found the medallion on a plasteel chain, wrenched it free and ran back to the closed cell door. The medallion was slick with blood, the edges toothed like a cog. ‘Come on, come on!’ She slotted the medallion into the lock. It turned. The door released with a thump of bolts and pistons. ‘Yes-yes-yes!’

A figure came through the door as it hinged wide. He was tall, very tall, and rake-thin, grey-white skin pulled taut across his bones, jumpsuit hanging like a sack from his frame. Mersadie looked up at his face, and froze. A band of metal circled his skull, riveted in place, holding a thick disc of iron across his forehead.

‘You are a Navigator…’ she breathed.

‘Well observed,’ he said, glancing around as a fresh tremor shook the deck. The Navigator hissed an expletive and began to run with long, loping strides. Mersadie followed.

The corridor pitched and twisted, throwing them into a wall as they reached a sealed hatchway barring their path.

‘Gravity systems are failing,’ said the Navigator. Mersadie pushed herself up and tugged him back onto his feet. His arm felt almost fragile in her grasp. ‘Structural collapse won’t be far behind.’

‘How far to the hangar?’ asked Mersadie. Her head was spinning.

‘Ten minutes, maybe,’ said the Navigator, starting off again. ‘If it is there at all.’

‘You said–’

‘I said that I knew ships. If this death-hulk has a standard layout, and if the decks beneath this one have not been flooded with fire or reduced to slag, then there should be a hoist shaft a few turns beyond this door.’

Mersadie slotted the key medallion into the hatch lock, and hoped that whatever luck had smiled on her so far would do so again.

Lights flashed a dim green on the lock console, and the hatch opened a crack, then the green lights faded. Mersadie shoved and felt the power-drained servo hinges give. A narrow gap opened. She squeezed through, the Navigator following.

Fading yellow emergency lights filled the wide passage beyond. Mersadie could smell smoke and burnt plastek. She moved forwards, matching the Navigator’s loping strides. ‘Of course, I’m presuming that there is nothing that’s going to try to kill us between here and there,’ he said.

Gunfire laced from the dark. Mersadie ducked against a wall, bracing as a shape scuttled into view, hugging the ground on chromed spider legs, a gun mount on its back. Blasts of las-fire burned from the thing as it came forwards. The Navigator was curled against the passage wall, hands pressed against his ears.

‘Is that the hoist?’ shouted Mersadie. She could see a chevron-marked recess set in a wide opening fifteen paces down the passage between them and the spider-machine.

‘It is in the right place, but–’