"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.
"Construction wants a check on the hull material," Kirrik bluffed.
"Right." The tone was sarcastic. "So they send someone who hasn't a clue about procedure." Too quickly for Kirrik or Marchero could react he pressed a button beside the door. Kirrik rushed forward to attack the man. He quickly managed to shove him out of the way, and both Kirrik and Marchero darted out into the corridor before he could stop them.
Before they could make an escape, though, both ends of the corridor filled with soldiers, armoured plating covering their bodies and laser rifles held ready.
Marchero reacted without thinking, and darted back to the door they had just emerged from. Kirrik followed her as the soldiers opened fire. Firing from each end of the corridor the soldiers often hit each other, but the weapons were on low power and their armour protected them. Without protection Kirrik and Marchero were vulnerable, and as Marchero dove through the door she heard a yell and a thump from behind her.
Inside the room the dazed technician had struggled to his feet and was trying to find a commlink. The startled man was caught by surprise by Marchero's rapid return and she knocked him down again before he had time to react.
Out in the corridor Kirrik was trying to crawl towards the door, one hand held to his hip and blood oozing from between his fingers. The soldiers were fast approaching, and it was clear that he would not make it in time. With his free hand he managed to shove his equipment bag along the floor, then collapsed.
As soon as the bag skidded through the entrance Marchero shut the door. Quickly hunting around it she found the lock, and having activated it she stood back and kicked its controls as hard as she could. It caved in beneath her foot. The mechanical part of the lock remained in place, holding the door shut.
A quick look around revealed no means of escape. There were no other doors from the room. A ventilation grille high up in one corner was only about a foot square. She ran around the room, flinging equipment aside and looking under the benches, but to no avail. There was noise behind the door, they were trying to break through.
The locked door did not last long under that pressure. It soon burst inwards, and the soldiers came pouring in through it. Now trapped Marchero was forced to surrender. She was grabbed roughly by two soldiers and clubbed unconscious by a third.
She awoke, but could see nothing. She tried to stand but the effort nearly made her vomit. As she lay gasping on the cold, metal floor the only noises were her own breathing and a distant hum of ventilation pumps.
She lay shivering for some time. The darkness grew no lighter, and there was nothing new to hear. She tried to stand again, and this time managed to make it to her feet. She tried to take a step forwards, but the after effects of the blow to her head and the complete lack of any visual reference brought her crashing down again.
She tried edging her away along the floor. She soon touched a wall, as cold and bare as the floor. With something to lean against she attempted to stand for a third time. With a shoulder against the wall she slowly moved along it.
The wall did not end. There were no markings, no hint of a door. She leaned face on against the blank metal, and spread her arms out. Her arms pushed her shoulders back slightly more than they should. The wall curved. It was impossible to tell how much, though, and if the room was elliptical and not circular it wouldn't mean much.
Marchero slid to the floor again. If the idea of stepping away from security of a vertical edge to cross the room had occurred to her she had dismissed it. She sat staring into the darkness, and eventually fell asleep.
When she awoke nothing had changed. Once again she sat and watched nothing. Time dragged by, without any means of determining its passage.
She started to fidget, aimlessly tugging her clothes or feeling the lump on her head where she had been hit. Soon she was kicking at the floor and wall. This pointless exercise eventually caught her attention, and she managed to hold herself still.
Still nothing happened. As time passed she dozed, went back to fidgeting, or even incoherent yelling. But there was not change in the circumstances.
This remained true long enough for her to sleep several times, and for the confinement to start to effect her body as well as her mind. Her occasional mutterings became more and more harsh as her throat dried out. The cell began to stink, although she wasn't really coherent enough to notice.
When there was a faint clank above her she yelped in alarm. Nothing happened for a few moments. Then their was a mechanical groan from somewhere above her head. A thin crescent of blinding light appeared, gradually growing larger and brighter as the ceiling moved back.
The cell was finally revealed as being circular, and about twenty feet in diameter. Apart from Marchero and its now soiled floor it was indeed completely featureless. Its height had been impossible to determine in the darkness, but was now shown to be at least half again as high as her.
Marchero was huddled against the wall, shielding her eyes with her hands and moaning quietly. A ladder was lowered into the pit. She ignored it.
"Up you go," a voice called down from somewhere above her. She didn't move. "Come on," the voice ordered impatiently. After waiting for a few seconds without a response the voice sighed. It was heard talking to someone else nearby. Two figures climbed down the ladder, and dragged Marchero over to it. After much pushing and shoving she slowly climbed out.
The room above the pit was nearly as blank as the cell had been. A small balcony surrounded the near edge, a railing marking it off from the downward opening. Two buttons were mounted on the railing, there were hooks on the wall to hold the ladder, and a door out.
When Marchero had managed to drag herself clear of the pit the two figures followed her up the ladder. Once on the balcony they hauled it up after them, and secured it to the hooks. One pressed one of the buttons, and what was now the floor ground shut.
The two figures who had brought Marchero out of the pit were nearly as untidy as she now looked. Both were men, unshaven, and wearing tattered clothes. Neither of them bore the green waistcoat that the base crew had been wearing. They said nothing to Marchero, she said nothing to them.
One of them left the room, the other prodded Marchero to follow. She stumbled out after him.
They moved for some time through an apparently deserted part of the base until eventually they moved into a room. The floor was covered in cargo canisters, and more hung from the ceiling. With a great deal of effort the men managed to drag one of the canisters away from the wall. With a nominal loaded weight of one tonne, it must have been empty for them to be able to move it at all.
Behind the canister was a narrow wall panel. One of the men tapped on it, and it was pulled open from the inside. Marchero was pushed through. When they were all in one of them picked up a clamp attached to a rope, fixed it on to the canister, and they dragged back. After releasing the clamp the panel was fixed back into place.
Behind the panel was a steeply sloping rock tunnel. Gravplates lined the floor, but the walls and ceiling were rough. A row of lights hung from a wire that was suspended from the wall by a series of bolts. The man who had opened the panel for them looked pointedly at Marchero, and asked "Just her?"
"Apparently not," one of the others replied.
Once they had moved away from the entrance the passageway appeared level, the gravplates imposing their sense of direction over the feeble one provided by the asteroid. It carried on for about a hundred yards, ending at an imposing metal door. This opened into a vast cavern. It appeared to slope upwards, merely by contrast to the apparent level surface of the passage to it. Rough buildings were scattered at random around the cavern, and much of the rest of it was filled with piled junk. The whole was dimly lit by a few lights around the walls, but brighter light shone out from some windows.