Chapter 60: The People Inside

The depot continued accepting ships.

That was the first thing Arcturus told them.

Dinraal had barely sat down.

“Despite the inspection team?”

“The depot’s automated system claims the inspection is complete.”

“Is it?”

“No.”

A projection appeared above the table.

A broad station occupied the center, surrounded by docking arms, storage platforms, and fuel tanks. Three vessels waited beyond its perimeter.

A fourth approached an open berth.

“The Imperial patrol warned that captain away,” Arcturus said. “He withdrew.”

Asha studied the station.

“Any response from the people aboard?”

“Nothing through the normal channels.”

“How many people should be there?” Isolde asked.

Arcturus brought up the most recent staffing record.

“Four hundred and sixty-two. More if there were visiting crews.”

Dinraal looked at the number.

A supplier.

A place for repairs.

Somewhere a tired captain could buy a meal while a mechanic replaced a failing part.

Four hundred and sixty-two people had worked there before something began sending anchors out beneath inspection seals.

“And Voss?” he asked.

“No departure record since Teren left him there.”

Aramaeis leaned forward.

“Are the patrol ships seeing spatial distortion?”

“Not yet.”

Asha’s expression tightened.

“That may mean the anchors are inactive.”

“Or that they haven’t seen where the active ones are,” Eve said.

Dinraal looked around the table.

“We need to reach the people inside.”

“And stop anything else leaving,” Alexander added.

Arcturus nodded.

“The Imperial patrol has closed the approaches. They can hold the perimeter. They’ve asked us to help determine what they’re holding.”

They spent the next day learning the depot.

Captain Teren sent every diagram he possessed from Edris.

Enna recognized several parts of the layout from earlier service visits.

The central spine carried power and freight between six working sections. Crew quarters occupied one side of the habitation ring. Offices, a medical room, and a small mess occupied the other.

The oldest maintenance tunnels ran beneath it all.

“These doors,” Enna said, pointing, “can still be opened locally. The dock systems can’t override them.”

Asha enlarged the passage.

“Pressure barriers?”

“And fire breaks. They were built before everything shared one control system.”

Dinraal followed the narrow route with his eyes.

It led from an exterior maintenance lock toward the inhabited sections.

“What about the workshops?”

Enna moved the map.

“Separate access. If you enter here, you can reach the fabrication floor without crossing the ring.”

Two routes.

Dinraal looked at Isolde.

She was already studying the habitation section.

“We need both.”

Alexander folded his arms.

“We also need to know whether the people inside can move.”

Arcturus changed the display.

A brief transmission appeared.

No voice.

Just several weak pulses recorded by one of the patrol ships.

“It came from an inspection light on the outer hull,” he said. “Someone interrupted its power manually.”

Enna leaned closer.

“How many repetitions?”

“Three.”

She counted under her breath.

Then she looked up.

“That’s an old maintenance signal.”

“What does it say?” Dinraal asked.

“Occupied compartment. External access required.”

They did not take everyone.

Aurelius remained at Hearth with Tiamat, Rhiannon, Cleopatra, Julius, and Eve. The stations still needed operators. The town still needed people who could protect it.

Arcturus coordinated the perimeter with the Imperial patrol.

Alexander commanded the expedition.

Dinraal, Isolde, Aramaeis, Gilgamesh, Johanna, and Asha would board.

Two rescue shuttles waited aboard the escort, staffed and ready.

The portable reference assembly occupied the central hold.

It had been rebuilt again after Edris.

This time, its emergency controls could be operated through thick gloves without seeing the panel.

Enna had tested that herself.

She handed Asha the final inspection sheet.

“No borrowing parts from it.”

Asha looked wounded.

“I did that once.”

“And now it’s an instruction.”

Dinraal smiled faintly.

Then Enna turned toward him.

“If someone inside tells you a pressure door is holding, believe them. Those old doors look thin. They aren’t.”

He nodded.

“Thank you.”

She stepped back from the ramp.

“Bring the workers out.”

That night, Dinraal and Isolde visited their house.

The windows were installed.

The walls smelled faintly of plaster.

A temporary lamp hung from a beam in the main room, illuminating the table Beren had delivered that afternoon.

It was an ordinary table.

Four legs.

A broad top.

Enough space for people to sit without striking their knees together.

Dinraal rested a hand on its edge.

Isolde stood in the kitchen doorway.

“We should eat here when we come back.”

He looked at her.

“There isn’t a working cooker.”

“We can bring food.”

“Rhiannon will consider that an invitation.”

“She can come.”

“So can everyone else?”

Isolde glanced at the table.

“We may need another.”

He laughed softly.

Then the laughter faded.

She crossed the room.

“What?”

He looked down at his hand.

A little plaster dust clung to the silver.

“I want to come back enough that leaving feels different.”

Isolde took his hand.

“So do I.”

He expected more.

Some reassurance.

She gave him none.

Instead, she stood with him in the unfinished room until he was ready to leave.

The depot looked busy when they arrived.

Cargo lights flashed along the docking arms. A repair cradle moved slowly around an empty berth. Illuminated arrows directed traffic toward doors that no ship was permitted to approach.

The Imperial patrol held well beyond those doors.

Its commander came aboard Alexander’s escort in person.

“We tried a loudspeaker drone near the habitation windows,” she said. “The station jammed it.”

“Any weapons?”

“One tracking turret followed it. It did not fire.”

Dinraal looked toward the forward display.

“And the maintenance light?”

“Still signaling intermittently.”

Asha had already isolated its location.

A storage section beside the old service tunnels.

“Can we answer without using their system?” Isolde asked.

The patrol commander nodded.

“We positioned a light where they should see it.”

“What did you send?”

“That help was preparing to board.”

Dinraal watched the small point blink against the station’s hull.

This time, someone was waiting on the other side.

Someone who had found a way to ask.

They crossed to the depot without announcing themselves to its docking system.

The reference assembly remained aboard the escort, ready if the local measurements began to fail.

Dinraal reached the maintenance lock first.

The outer mechanism had been bent.

Not by an impact.

Someone had driven a locking bar through it from inside.

Gilgamesh examined the obstruction.

“May I?”

Aramaeis checked the surrounding hull.

“Carefully.”

Gilgamesh’s silver formed into a narrow grip.

The bar slid free with agonizing slowness.

He held it up.

“Intact.”

Asha, watching through his camera, sounded almost proud.

“Very good.”

“I find your surprise insulting.”

The outer hatch opened.

Inside, a man in a pressure suit stood with a wrench raised in both hands.

He looked at Dinraal.

Then Isolde.

Then Gilgamesh and the bar.

His arms slowly lowered.

“You’re real?”

Dinraal opened his helmet once the lock’s independent gauges confirmed pressure.

“Yes.”

The man stared at his face.

Then he began crying.

His name was Pell.

He supervised the depot’s night maintenance crew.

He had thirty-seven people behind the next pressure door.

They had been there for five days.

“We had water in the emergency tanks,” he said, guiding them through the cramped passage. “Food from the break room. Then some from the vending stores.”

“What happened?” Johanna asked.

Pell looked over his shoulder.

“They took the dispatch office first. We didn’t know that at the time. Orders kept coming down.”

“Who took it?”

“I saw three. They looked like people.”

His voice shook.

“One of them was our shift controller.”

Dinraal thought of Voss smiling at the camera.

Pell reached the pressure door and struck it twice with the wrench.

A voice answered from the other side.

He gave his name.

Then a short phrase.

Bolts withdrew.

The compartment beyond smelled of unwashed bodies and hot machinery.

People sat between storage racks.

Two lay on blankets.

A woman held a little girl against her shoulder.

Dinraal stopped.

Pell followed his gaze.

“Staff families. There are more in the habitation ring.”

Johanna was already kneeling beside the people on the floor.

Isolde moved toward the woman and child.

Dinraal looked at Pell.

“How many more?”

“I don’t know who made it behind the doors.”

“Then show us where to start.”

They divided at the first junction.

Isolde and Johanna led the rescue team into the habitation section, with Gilgamesh clearing access and guarding the withdrawal route.

Dinraal and Aramaeis accompanied Asha toward dispatch.

They needed the station’s local controls.

They also needed to prevent its workshops from sending another anchor anywhere.

The corridors remained lit.

That made them worse.

A cleaning machine traveled past a dark stain without stopping.

An announcement reminded personnel that the mess would close in twenty minutes.

Dinraal passed an open office.

A cup lay on the floor beneath a desk.

The drink had dried around it.

His silver tightened along his shoulders.

Aramaeis touched his arm.

“Listen.”

Footsteps.

Several sets.

Measured.

Approaching around the next corner.

Dinraal raised one hand.

A barrier closed across the corridor just as the first figure appeared.

It wore a depot uniform.

Its head struck the silver without slowing its body.

For an instant, flesh pressed flat against the field.

Then its jaw opened sideways.

Pale filaments spread across the barrier.

Asha drew back.

Dinraal held.

Three more figures crowded behind the first.

Their hands unfolded into shapes that had never belonged to human anatomy.

Aramaeis moved beside him.

“Back from the glass,” his uncle said.

Dinraal shifted.

A narrow silver blade passed through the barrier from Aramaeis’s side.

The first creature fell.

The others struck at it, tearing through one another in their effort to reach the opening.

Dinraal changed the barrier’s shape.

It drove them backward into the junction.

Aramaeis cut again.

The corridor shook.

Then the movement stopped.

Dinraal stared at the ruined uniforms.

“Were they—”

“I don’t know,” his uncle said.

Neither pretended that was enough.

They moved on.

In the habitation ring, Isolde found the second group behind a fire door.

Seventy-four people.

They had stacked furniture against the entrance and disconnected every speaker they could reach.

A woman with a broken wrist opened the inspection slot.

“Who sent you?”

“Hearth,” Isolde said. “And the Imperial patrol.”

The woman did not move.

Isolde stepped back from the door.

“Ask us something. Take your time.”

A long silence.

Then the woman said, “The station told us help arrived yesterday.”

Johanna looked toward the speaker hanging from its torn cable.

“Did you open the door?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Behind Isolde, Gilgamesh stood very still.

The woman began describing the faces she had seen outside.

Johanna listened until she finished.

Then she explained where the rescue shuttles waited.

They passed a lamp through the inspection slot, followed by a handwritten route map.

Eventually, the furniture began moving.

Isolde let out a slow breath.

At the far end of the corridor, something spoke in a child’s voice.

Gilgamesh turned toward it.

“Keep opening the door,” he told the people inside.

His armor flowed over his face.

“I’ll deal with that.”

Dispatch was empty.

Asha reached its central console and stopped before touching it.

“Local power isolation first.”

Aramaeis found the physical junction.

Dinraal stood at the entrance while his uncle disconnected it.

The screens went dark.

Asha attached her own small power unit to a maintenance port.

One display returned.

She began extracting the local storage.

“Workshop controls are separate. I can see the freight elevators, but I can’t stop fabrication from here.”

“Can you stop launches?”

“Yes.”

“Do it.”

The docking arms locked.

Cargo doors began closing across the station.

Then a second display lit.

A man appeared on it.

Thin.

Work coat.

Voss.

He looked directly toward Dinraal.

“You are damaging useful equipment.”

Asha pulled her cable free.

The image remained.

Dinraal stepped closer.

“Where are the workers?”

Voss tilted his head.

“Some have made themselves difficult to reach.”

“Then you’re going to have a worse day.”

For the first time, the man’s expression changed.

Amusement, perhaps.

“Your species becomes remarkably attached to individual instances.”

Aramaeis raised his hand toward the screen.

Dinraal stopped him.

Voss watched.

Behind the man, a window showed a large fabrication chamber.

Rows of sealed units stood in loading cradles.

Far more than five.

Asha was already recording the image with a separate camera.

Dinraal held Voss’s attention.

“Why send equipment? Why hide?”

“Why break a door when someone will carry you through it?”

The image flickered.

Then Isolde’s voice sounded in Dinraal’s ear.

“We have the second group moving. Gilgamesh is holding the junction.”

Dinraal looked away from the screen.

Voss’s smile disappeared.

“You cannot remove all of them.”

Dinraal turned back.

“We’re working on it.”

He broke the display with his fist.

Asha found the fabrication chamber on the map.

Its loading racks connected to an exterior freight lock.

Aramaeis studied the route.

“If those units activate together—”

“We don’t let them,” Dinraal said.

Asha held up a hand.

“There’s an independent cargo-pressure system. Old mechanical controls. Enna’s diagrams show the access.”

Dinraal looked at the passage.

Then contacted Alexander.

“We need the outer freight bay covered. Nothing leaving it gets near a ship.”

“Understood.”

“Isolde?”

“Third group found. Forty-six. We’re bringing them through.”

“How many aboard?”

“Johanna has the count.”

He closed his eyes briefly.

People moving.

People reaching the shuttles.

Something he could trust.

Then he followed Asha into the maintenance passage.

They reached the control wheel as the station began to shudder.

Asha checked an independent sensor.

“Spatial disagreement increasing.”

“Alexander,” Dinraal said.

“Reference assembly active. Rescue vessels holding within the field.”

Aramaeis put both hands on the wheel.

It refused to turn.

He braced himself.

Metal groaned.

The mechanism moved.

Beyond the reinforced inspection window, the fabrication chamber’s inner doors closed.

One stopped halfway.

A pale figure forced itself into the gap.

Dinraal raised his gauntlet.

A silver lance crossed the chamber.

The figure vanished beneath it.

The door shut.

Asha pulled the mechanical release.

The exterior freight lock opened.

Air tore through the chamber.

Tools, unsecured panels, and three workers’ empty coats vanished into the dark.

The loading cradles remained fastened.

Dinraal pressed his hand against the inspection barrier.

“Uncle.”

“I see them.”

Together, they sent fine cutting lines through the cradle mounts.

One.

Then another.

Then an entire row broke free.

The anchor units tumbled out of the station.

Beyond them, Alexander’s escort fired.

White flashes filled the opening.

Dinraal kept cutting.

The last cradle tore loose.

Asha’s sensor steadied.

The station’s shuddering eased.

But somewhere deeper inside, a heavy impact traveled through the floor.

Voss had not been in the chamber.

They found the final occupied compartment beside the infirmary.

Twenty-two people.

Pell’s missing shift partner among them.

By then, the rescue teams had established a route through the old service spine.

Gilgamesh stood at its far junction, armor scored and one hand closed around a ruined length of structural beam.

When Dinraal reached him, he glanced toward the survivors.

“Are those the last?”

“The last we’ve found.”

Gilgamesh nodded.

Then he stepped backward with them.

No one suggested staying to search the automated workshops while the station’s inner sections began sealing themselves.

They left survey drones behind.

They left a map of every unchecked compartment.

They took everyone they could reach.

Two hundred and eighty-four people crossed into the rescue vessels.

The number settled over the briefing room after they withdrew.

The depot’s staffing list had held four hundred and sixty-two.

There had also been families.

Visitors.

People whose names would have to be found in other records.

Dinraal stood beside the table while Johanna delivered the count.

“Twenty-one require continued hospital care. The rest are exhausted, dehydrated, or injured, but stable.”

“And the station?” Aurelius asked over the incoming command link.

Alexander answered.

“Contained. No traffic in or out. The Imperial patrol will maintain observation.”

“Voss?”

Dinraal shook his head.

“Still inside, unless he left through a route we never saw.”

Asha placed the recovered storage unit on the table.

“We stopped the current shipments.”

Everyone looked at it.

“And we have dispatch’s local records.”

Dinraal sat.

His legs had begun trembling sometime after the last shuttle docked.

He had only just noticed.

Isolde took the chair beside him.

Across the room, Pell stood with his shift partner, both wrapped in blankets.

They were talking about who had made it out.

Naming people.

Correcting one another.

Beginning again when one of them forgot a name.

Dinraal listened until Johanna sent them to eat.

The first file Asha opened contained destinations.

The second contained inventory.

The third was labeled returns.

Inside it, she found photographs of incoming vessels.

Several were damaged.

Some had been stripped of their registration plates.

One had a cracked forward canopy and a pale scar along its port side.

Dinraal recognized the survey design before the identifying text appeared.

HALDEN’S REACH — SURVEY TWO.

He leaned forward.

The photograph had been taken inside the depot’s receiving bay.

Attached beneath it was a cargo transfer entry.

Isolde read it aloud.

“Crew separation completed. Biological consignment moved to holding annex.”

Nobody spoke.

Then Asha opened the annex map.

A cluster of storage modules stood apart from the main station, connected only by a short-range freight route.

The boarding teams had never reached it.

Alexander turned toward the bridge door.

Dinraal caught his wrist.

“We check the date first.”

His voice shook, but he held Alexander’s gaze.

“We find out whether they’re still there.”

Asha was already working.

On the display, the survey vessel remained frozen beneath the depot’s cold lights.

For the first time since Halden’s Reach, they had more than stolen voices.

They had a place to look.