Phillip manually closed the outer airlock hatch and turned his attention to the inner door.

Being trapped inside the lock with the white was proving increasingly disturbing. Free-floating energy drifted across his suit and crawled along its surface in slow electrical waves. His visor displays appeared and disappeared at random, offering contradictory warnings before replacing them with new ones. At one point, the suit declared him dead. He decided to ignore it and kept working the manual release.

When the inner hatch finally opened, Phillip found the corridor beyond flooded with the same ghostly white energy. He lifted Thomas carefully, taking care not to disturb the needle protruding from the lieutenant’s side, and carried him into the passage. The white obscured familiar details and disrupted Phillip’s sense of direction. He tried to reconstruct their previous route but could no longer tell which turns they had taken.

With no better reference, he continued in the direction they had been moving before the pirates trapped them. The corridor curved along the outer edge of the ship, and Phillip guessed they were heading toward the bow. Everything looked much like every other part of Artemis, except for the white energy drifting through the air and passing through exposed machinery in pale, rippling currents.

Phillip focused on the route and ignored everything his visor claimed was failing. After several minutes, he reached one of the panels concealing the ladder trunks between decks. The controls were unpowered. He found the manual mechanism and began working it, though the damaged gears resisted every movement.

The panel opened slowly. Beyond it lay a small sealed compartment rather than the ladder itself. Phillip pulled Thomas inside, climbed in after him, then operated the mechanism from the opposite side. The corridor panel closed, isolating them from the white. Only then did the plates above and below begin to retract.

Phillip stopped long enough to brace Thomas against the wall before releasing the final lock. Breathable air rushed into the compartment. The remaining white twisted into thin streams, withdrew through the seams, and vanished.

Phillip carried Thomas down one level and found a clear section of passage where he could lower him to the deck. He pressed the control to retract his helmet. The overlapping plates shifted upward, ground against one another, and stopped halfway. Their edges blocked most of his vision.

Phillip pressed the control again. Nothing happened.

He tried forcing the plates apart, but the mechanism had fused. With no other way to see properly, he released the suit seals and stripped the damaged armor away. The clothes beneath were soaked through with sweat and looked as though they had spent several weeks at the bottom of a laundry pile.

Phillip examined the suit for anything worth keeping. Most of the attached equipment had either fused into its mountings or burned out completely. The field generator that had protected him from the pirates’ needles was dark and unresponsive.

Thomas’s equipment appeared to be in much the same condition. The lieutenant’s suit still seemed to be stabilizing the needle wound, however, and Phillip hesitated to remove it before finding medical assistance. He pressed the release for Thomas’s helmet. The plates retracted slowly, grinding as they folded back into the collar. Fortunately, they opened far enough for Phillip to see his face. Thomas was pale. Blood marked one corner of his mouth, but his chest continued to rise in shallow breaths.

Alive, for the moment.

Phillip lifted him again and continued through the passage, watching for anything that might help. They had returned to the main body of the ship—or Phillip believed they had. Crew members lay along the corridor ahead. Judging by their positions and the scoring across the bulkheads, they had mounted an organized defense at several junctions before being overwhelmed. The pirates had collected their weapons and stripped away most of the useful equipment. Phillip found little beyond empty ammunition housings and damaged tools. Then he saw a large symbol beside an open doorway. It matched the emblem on the medkit.

Phillip carried Thomas inside. The medical compartment had not been spared. Several crew members remained on treatment beds, killed where they had lain. Others had fallen between the beds and equipment stations, some still attached to monitoring leads.

Phillip found an empty treatment platform and lowered Thomas onto it. He searched the cabinets and supply compartments, but the pirates had already plundered the room. Anything that might serve as a weapon, stimulant, or emergency treatment had been removed.

A smaller doorway at the back of the compartment led into what appeared to be a morgue. Rows of narrow storage lockers lined one wall. Phillip opened them one at a time. Most were empty. A few contained bodies sealed beneath translucent coverings. None held anything he could use. He opened the final locker.

A foul odor escaped as the slab extended. Phillip recoiled, raising one arm across his face. A human figure lay on the tray, streaked with dried blood and soot. Scorched clothing and red-black stains disguised most of the body beneath them. Phillip reached for the control to close the locker, then he recognized the face.

“Kales?” He leaned closer. The body was warm. Phillip reached out.

The corpse screamed.

Kales flailed wildly, rolled from the slab, and struck the floor. He scrambled toward the doorway on his hands and knees. Phillip stepped after him and planted a foot against the doctor’s side, knocking him onto his back and against the wall.

“I’m a doctor!” Kales cried, raising both arms to protect his face. “I can be useful—”

“Kales, shut up.” Phillip caught his wrists and pulled his hands down. “Shut up and get control of yourself.”

Kales stopped struggling and stared at him. “Phillip?” His eyes moved over Phillip’s ruined clothing. “You’re one of them?”

“No.” Phillip released him but remained close enough to stop him from running. “Lieutenant Thomas is outside. He’s been shot. The pirates took the medkits, and I need you thinking again.”

“If they find us, they’ll kill us.” Kales’s words came rapidly. “They’ll kill him too. We have to hide.”

Phillip snapped his fingers in front of the doctor’s face. “Focus. You’re a doctor. Thomas is wounded. You need to treat him.”

Confusion replaced some of the panic in Kales’s expression. Phillip pulled him upright and guided him out of the morgue. When Kales saw the bodies in the medical bay, his breathing quickened again. His attention moved from one corpse to another, searching for some place to retreat.

Phillip caught his arm in a vise-like grip. Pain interrupted the spiral. Kales turned sharply toward him. Phillip held on until he had the doctor’s full attention, then released him.

“How are you still alive?” Kales demanded. Fear had shifted toward anger, which Phillip considered an improvement.

He pointed toward Thomas. “Focus. The lieutenant needs your help. Now.”

Kales looked down at Thomas, then at the needle protruding from his side. Professional recognition began overtaking panic. He moved closer and examined the damaged suit seal.

“His pressure layer closed around the projectile,” Kales said. “That slowed the bleeding, but the barb may have torn something internally.” His hands began moving across the treatment controls.

Phillip stepped back. Fear and resentment could remain. As long as Kales kept working, they were useful. Then Phillip noticed something beneath a heavy tarp at the rear of the medical bay. A tall shape. Narrow. Almost entirely hidden behind damaged equipment and storage containers.

Phillip moved toward it.

Each step brought another fragment of memory. A dark corridor. The hum of machinery beneath a moving platform. Restraints around his wrists and chest. Sedation spreading through his body while unseen handlers transported him toward something he already feared. The images appeared and vanished almost at once, but the feeling remained. He had made that journey more than once.

He knew what waited at the end. Phillip stopped beside the tarp. His hands had begun to tremble. He pulled the covering away.

A tall, coffin-shaped cylinder stood beneath it. The surface was no longer as clean as the one in his memories. Dark streaks crossed the casing. Deep gouges scarred material that had once been smooth and seamless. There was no mistaking it.

“That is what you were found in,” Kales said behind him.

Phillip did not turn. “Work on the lieutenant.” He let the tarp fall across the cylinder.

“We’ll talk later.”

Next Chapter: XII