Brad shouted down. "First guy who shoves his head through the hatch gets it burned off." Turning to Kumiko and Scarf he whispered, "That won't hold them for long."
"Listen, about that shooting…", Scarf began.
Brad snapped him short with an impatient gesture.
"Not now. Let's get to the utility."
They looked around. The space was almost dark; the only light from widely spaced, low-power neutro-lamps. They were standing on a narrow platform, little more than a ledge, from which a catwalk bridged a complex of girders and cables.
Brad mentally reconstructed their route before Cordy's challenge. The portal through which they boarded should be within fifty meters of where they crouched. Their lives depended on the catwalk passing close to it.
Studying the arrangement of the structures around them and the coding on cable bundles, Brad peered along the catwalk, first in one direction, then the opposite.
He looked at the open hatch and shouted down. "We demand safe conduct to our ship. Do you hear me?"
Silence.
Scarf shoved his face close to Brad.
"Are you kiddin'?" he said, his tone expressing his disbelief. "I just killed one of their men. They're not gonna give us safe conduct anywhere."