us here for some reason. What that might be, though, I do not know.”
Lights snapped on in sequence, leading them away from the shuttles and toward an interior bulkhead door. He nodded toward it. “It appears, though, that our presence is required. Shall we?”
There was no sense staying with the shuttles, so without waiting for an answer, he headed toward the door, the others in the group at his heels. Their footsteps rang against the deck plating, loud in the silence of the abandoned hangar.
“We’re being watched,” Indra murmured at his side.
He nodded. “I know. I feel it too.”
And he did, the hairs still raised on the back of his neck. He didn’t believe anything biological was watching them but rather someone viewing them remotely. He just hoped if it was the AI, the thing hadn’t gone mad. If it had… well it was just as likely to amuse itself leading them through the maze of a long-ruined base and then vent them to space when it got bored.
“I can’t access anything remotely,” Keris added, her flat mechanical tones jarring to his senses. “All access points are locked down tightly, but I can tell you one thing. This place might look abandoned, but the internal sensors work just fine, which means there’s a generator working somewhere. It’s almost like someone decided to shut down certain areas deliberately.”
Nyek frowned as they reached the doorway. A quick motion had Seren maneuvering ahead of them to secure it as they all moved through into the corridor beyond.
Why would someone deliberately shut down parts of the base if they were fully functional? It didn’t make sense.
“Can you access environmental controls? Or lighting?” he asked. If they could get control of the first, he would breathe far easier knowing that neither the AI nor anyone else could open the airlocks and vent them to space.
“I’ll give it a go. Might need to find a physical access panel and jack in directly, though.”
He nodded, concentrating on their surroundings. The corridor was as empty as the hangar had been, dust motes dancing in the air as lights snapped on. They extended down the corridor to the left.
Watching them for a moment, he deliberately turned and started the other way. The lights didn’t auto-illuminate, just as he’d suspected, and within a couple of steps, a bulkhead activated and slammed shut in front of him, almost taking the tip of his nose off.
He shrugged as he took a deliberate step back and turned.
“Well, looks like we’re headed that way then.”
As creepy secret bases went, this one had to be at the top of the list. Indra shivered and drew a little closer to Nyek’s comforting presence. A hint of a smile crossed her lips as she noted the other humans had all done the same, sticking close to their Latharian partners.
Even Stephens, although he was trying like hell to hide it. She wouldn’t, not when Keris’s metal skin would protect against pretty much anything. Probably up to and including a nuclear strike. But men… and their egos.
It seemed she wasn’t the only one to notice the sudden clumping together of the humans as Nyek raised an eyebrow at her.
“We’ve all seen this movie,” she told him. “Abandoned space station in the middle of nowhere, plucky crew sent to investigate and a mysterious overseer controlling everything.” She pointed upward at the lights.
“Yeah,” Gracie added. “This is normally the part where the idiot of the group wanders off with ‘be right back’ and then dies a horrible death…”
“Or some carnivorous alien leaps out from the shadows, picking us off one by one.”
Indra glared at the shadows, trying to pierce the gloom around them. Anything could be hiding in the darker ones. Abruptly she wished she’d eaten more carrots when she was younger. But since all the food had been vat-grown fungi, reshaped and flavored to look and taste like something else, it probably wouldn’t have helped.
“Bugs,” Stephens commented with distaste. “It’s gonna be bugs. It’s always bugs.”
Instantly Indra resolved to find some cockroaches to put in his bed when they got back to the Izal’vias. Guy had a serious bug problem, perhaps some desensitization therapy would help him. That, or the vid would provide endless hours of amusement.
Before any of them could say another word, the lights all snapped on around them. Indra caught her breath, squinting against the brightness. They illuminated everything, revealing every surface of the metal-walled corridor.
There was nothing hiding in the shadows, and nowhere for anything to