Sabak moved to the centre of the large room and raised his hands for everybody's attention. He swivelled around to look at all of them, while pointing a finger exaggeratedly at the panel on his spacesuit's arm. He was asking them all to switch to the public channel. As Kendrick tapped at his own screen, his ears were filled by a tumult of voices from all around him.
"We made it," Sabak was announcing, his grin just visible through his helmet visor. "We made it here, thanks to the Bright." There were several whoops and a lot of cheering.
"If any of you have started to have doubts, if you've decided there's too much for you to leave behind, then now is the time to say so," Sabak continued. "Nobody will think the worse of you. This is something monumental, but we're only human. If you want to go home, then do so with our blessing."
He turned to scan all the faces around him, but no one spoke out, no one stepped forward. Even the ones Kendrick had seen earlier in floods of tears remained resolutely silent.
"What about him?" somebody called out, pointing at Draeger. Kendrick glanced over at the billionaire, whose face remained impassive behind his visor.
"Mr Draeger has helped us get here in one piece," Sabak explained carefully. "If it wasn't for him-"
"If it wasn't for him," somebody else shouted, in a voice crackling with static, "we would never have got into this shit in the first place! What the hell is he doing here, anyway? We didn't invite him!"
In an instant the mood turned, with more shouting and accusations blending into a tumult. It was clear that Sabak was on the brink of losing control. Draeger and his men numbered barely more than half a dozen, and there were many more times that number of angry Labrats.
Someone suddenly ran at Draeger, their movements clumsy in the low-g environment. Kendrick watched in horror as Smeby reached into a deep pocket and produced a snub nosed weapon that he then gripped tightly in both hands and aimed.
Kendrick began to move forward, seeing a way in which he might calm the situation. Through the protester's visor he caught a brief glimpse of a middle-aged male face, the marks of long-term rogue augmentation extending across the forehead.
As if by magic, holes appeared in the assailant's space-suit. Kendrick watched as the Labrat spun around, almost in a parody of a ballet twirl. He collided with a nearby couch and fell into a lifeless heap.
Kendrick opened his mouth to yell something, but his words were lost even to himself as his ears filled with the distorted sound of people screaming.
"Stay back!" Smeby was yelling over the public channel. The rest of Draeger's men now stood brandishing identical black weapons.
Kendrick stared in horror at the body of the dead Labrat. The man's face had ceased to exist below the nose, and an ocean of red fountained from the ruin of his jaw, spilling out of the shattered remains of his helmet.
Kendrick turned away, sickened. They were heading for a massacre. He found his own weapon and gripped it in one hand, all too aware of the terrible special dangers of getting shot in a vacuum. Sabak's men had produced their own weapons and now faced Smeby and the rest of Draeger's men in a deadly stand-off.
"We're going ahead," Smeby announced tightly. "Anybody tries to follow, we'll shoot to kill. All of you got that?"
Sabak stared past him, looking Draeger in the eyes. "The Bright will kill you all. You know that, don't you?" he warned.
As Draeger gazed back with glittering eyes, Kendrick felt a tingling in his hand, as if a faint electric current was running through it. He felt an overwhelming urge to touch something: a wall, a floor, anything.
"We're going to head through that door," Smeby announced, his voice distorted with static. "Nobody else comes through it for at least another twenty minutes, do you understand me?" Draeger himself remained mute.
There were only four internal exits from the reception area they all stood in, three of them corridors winding out of sight as they followed the curvature of the space station's hull. The fourth exit remained sealed by a pressure door beside which two of Draeger's men were now huddled. The other three, along with Smeby, faced the Labrats, weapons at the ready.
An intensely bright flash briefly blinded Kendrick and the pressure door jerked open, revealing the corridor beyond. Draeger and the rest of his party hustled through, all the while keeping their weapons aimed at the Labrats. The door slid shut again, cutting off Draeger's party from sight.
Sabak ran forward as soon as the door had closed. Others rushed up behind him, one reaching for the control panel. "Stay back!" Sabak yelled. "Don't try anything until I tell you to. Give them time to get away. Everyone, stay back!"
Kendrick thumbed his suit panel until he was on a one-to-one channel with Sabak. "Nobody's letting them get away."
"We have priorities, do you understand me?" Sabak's voice was angry. "At least this way we don't have to watch them the whole time."
Kendrick pushed closer. "What the hell do you think he's going to do in there? Have you even thought about the damage he could do if he finds what he's looking for?"
"Assuming he gets anywhere" Sabak replied. "The Bright haven't shown any lack of aptitude where repelling boarding parties is concerned. And, besides, he can't get back down to Earth without our help."
"Unless he finds a way to reach that one intact Los Muertos shuttle. There's no reason to assume it isn't still functioning. I just don't believe that Draeger would have come up here unless he was pretty sure of finding a way back down again."
"The Bright will take care of him," Sabak replied confidently.
"Or maybe we've all been seriously underestimating him for too long. He could have something planned that we haven't been expecting. Don't you understand yet what's at stake here? Look, myself and a couple of others, we can go in and scout ahead. That'll give the rest of you an opportunity to move somewhere more secure in the meantime."
Sabak looked ready to explode behind his visor. "Jesus – fine, do whatever you think you have to do. But if anything happens I'm not sending anyone to look for you."
Buddy stepped up and broke into their conversation. "Gerry, quit arguing. We need to find somewhere properly pressurized before people start running out of air." He caught Kendrick's eye. "Right now that's our first priority, and we're going to need every hand."
Sabak made the decision to follow a passage leading directly to one of the main caverns, in the hope that they'd find somewhere along the way where they'd be able to breathe without depleting their tanks. Kendrick still felt that overwhelming urge to take off a glove and just touch something.
But that, of course, would result in a fatal loss of air. He'd found himself wondering if he could try repeating his experience in the airbase, when he'd found he had stopped breathing completely, but decided he'd rather not experiment. Not if it ended up with him writhing on the ground, desperately trying to get his helmet back on.
As they entered the wide passage Kendrick noted that wand-nodes were mounted along the walls every several metres. These old-fashioned devices dated the station, giving it an oddly quaint edge. He was suddenly glad he'd retained the wand that Buddy had given him back at the Maze.
As he pointed it at the nearest node, the wand's little screen blinked rapidly, informing him that it had downloaded a station guide. This turned out to include a 3D version of the map he'd first noticed back in the reception area.
Here he was in the middle of a crowd of Labrats, most of whom looked fairly subdued following the death of one of their number. He glanced around, studying the faces visible behind the visors: nobody seemed particularly heroic or brave or adventurous. But the Archimedes had cowed almost all of them, and Kendrick could feel its vast bulk weighing on him too.