'You have no idea what you're talking about,' Dakota snapped, now losing her own temper. 'I'm sick and tired of you thinking everyone with an implant is some kind of devil out to-'
'Stop it, both of you!' Perez yelled. 'Keep this crap up and we won't even deserve to survive what's up ahead. We either work together or we give up now. Standing around pointing fingers solves nothing.' He looked at Dakota. 'It's a good idea, Miss Merrick – but I'm coming with you.' Ty panicked when at first he couldn't raise anyone over the comms system, then nearly convinced himself he was trapped there in the lab as the doors failed to respond. But he soon located the emergency overrides and made his way out into the passageway beyond.
When the alarm finally shut off, his ears still rang in the sudden silence. He pushed himself cautiously along through the ship, unnerved by the eerie red emergency lighting, which made the frigate seem somehow unfamiliar and threatening.
He worked his way onwards until he reached a hydroponics deck filled with lush scents, the air warm and humid. There was also a transport station there, but when he tried one of the waiting cars it didn't respond.
He was going to have to get himself to the bridge the hard way.
Ty retraced his steps, pushing himself along a wide passageway until he found his path blocked by an enormous pressure door that must have slid into place when the alarm went off. He stared at it, dismayed, wondering if the ship had lost atmosphere in some areas. He tried the overrides, but this time they didn't work.
He doubled back and tried another route. Once again, he found his way barred, but this time the overrides did work.
He passed through three more such doors on his journey towards the centrifuge, before he sighted several bright points of light moving towards him from up ahead. He waited until they drew closer, finally resolving into half-a-dozen spider-mechs propelling themselves forward on gentle puffs of gas.
'Hey! Driscoll! Is that you?'
Ty recognized Dan Perez coming along the passageway a short distance behind the spiders, accompanied by Dakota Merrick. Ty moved to one side to let the spiders pass. Two of them cut off down a side passage, while the rest kept on in the same direction, heading back towards the hydroponics deck.
'Where were you when the alert sounded?' asked Dakota, as she and Perez drew abreast of him.
'In the labs,' Ty replied. 'I had trouble getting out.'
'And the Mos Hadroch? It's still where it should be?'
The question surprised Ty. For some reason, the possibility that it might be in danger had simply never occurred to him. 'It's fine,' he replied. 'But who would want to take it?'
Dakota got a strange look on her face. 'One of us should go back and stay there, keep an eye on things.'
'Then, in that case, I might as well go back myself,' said Ty.
Perez nodded. 'Yeah, good idea. We just needed to make sure everyone was all right while the comms are down. The others are up on the bridge trying to figure out what happened. I'll send a couple of spiders with you as well, just in case.'
'Just in case what?'
'We can keep an eye on you through the spider's sensory systems,' Perez explained. 'Until we have a better idea what's going on.'
'I guess I don't have a problem with that,' Ty replied.
'One other thing,' said Dakota. 'We haven't heard or seen from Olivarri yet. Have you?'
Ty shook his head. 'No, not…' Not since he approached me to tell me he was spying on all of us. 'Not since our last shift together, no.'
Perez glanced at Dakota. 'I guess we keep on looking then.'
'Yeah. Listen, Nathan. Since we can stay in touch through the spiders, if you see or hear anything, let us know straight away. Especially if you see Olivarri.' A couple of hours later Dakota hauled herself back up to the bridge and collapsed on to a couch. Corso and Martinez stepped over to join her, while Willis worked away in the background at mapping the areas of the frigate that had already been checked out.
'I've had time to think about this now,' she told them. 'There are about a dozen key vulnerabilities at different points on the ship, based on what I've seen with my own eyes as well as via the spiders, and every one of them was hit individually.'
'Ted said pretty much the same thing,' said Corso, who had taken a seat next to a console and swivelled it around to face her. Martinez stood beside him, eyeing her like she was something you would grow in a Petri dish. His attitude towards Corso had clearly become somewhat strained ever since learning about Trader. 'So it's definitely sabotage?'
She nodded, and tried to blink away her fatigue. 'I think someone spent a lot of time setting things up. The data-space has recovered enough that I managed to track down software routines in the primary stacks which I can't even begin to explain. They might be viruses, or they might be something else. I'm guessing the former, but they've now been cleaned out or isolated.'
'And that's what caused the ship to shut down?'
Dakota shrugged. 'That's my guess.'
Martinez folded his arms and looked from one to the other. 'But still no sign of Olivarri?'
'Nope.' Dakota shook her head. 'The spiders are still out searching through the whole ship, but there's just too much space to cover. It could take us weeks to investigate every nook and cranny.'
'All right, what about Trader?' asked Corso.
'Look,' she said, 'disregarding just for the moment the fact neither of us trusts him in the least, I just don't see any way he could have pulled this off
'But it's not like there isn't precedent,' Corso insisted. 'We know he's lied in the past, and we both know how machine-heads like yourself are vulnerable to-'
Dakota sat up and glared at him. 'Listen, I'm getting really sick of being treated like I'm some kind of bomb about to go off. Why don't you-'
Something beeped loudly, cutting her off mid-sentence.
'That's Dan on the emergency frequency,' said Willis, stepping over to an adjacent console. 'I'll put him through the overhead.'
Dan Perez's face appeared on a screen next to the couch. Nancy Schiller was visible just behind him, floating in a stretch of red-lit passageway.
'It's Olivarri.' Perez sounded out of breath. 'We just found him, down near one of the fusion-maintenance bays. He's dead.'
Chapter Twenty-five
By the time Corso and Martinez reached the maintenance bay, Perez had found some opaque plastic sheeting to cover Olivarri's body. Schiller had meanwhile headed back to the bridge.
Corso winced when Perez pulled the sheet back from Olivarri's head and upper torso, because the back of his head had been caved in. Dried blood had crusted around his mouth, and his nose was crushed flat against his skull.
He was barely recognizable, Corso thought.
Martinez leaned in close to the body and looked up at Perez. 'Where exactly did you find him?'
'Over there.' Perez nodded towards where a large steel panel had swung away from the wall. 'Whoever did this wedged him behind that maintenance panel, but it then set off an alert on one of the control boards. I got the shock of my fucking life when I pulled the door open to check it out.'
'Question is,' said Corso, 'why hide him here? Why not just drag him to an airlock and push his body outside the ship? That way we'd never have known what happened to him.'
Martinez shook his head. 'Too much chance of getting picked up by the hull's sensor arrays. They run on their own power and control systems, so whoever did this presumably knew they'd be spotted if they tried to do so. To be honest, we're lucky we found him at all. This ship is big enough that, apart from an alert being triggered, it might have taken a long time before we eventually found him.'