Alarm bells ringing, smelling molten metal yielded under plasma fire, I shunt my way across the deck – nervous that my movements leave ripples in the smoke. Signals fly into my headset – commands, instructions, shouts and screams of pain from fallen colleagues, but I concentrate on my task: reaching the main hangar control, and venting all into space.

I shin up the access ladder and run down the gangway towards the main engineer, desperately prodding buttons on his console. With a slick slicing motion I push through the weak field of his defence suit and perforate his jugular – he drops, gurgling softly.

As the override codes begin to take down the plasma curtain I see a man walking towards me. He carries a clipboard and a small pistol. I fire at him, but the shots pass through him as if he was a ghost. He can see me. He shoots, a tiny dart somehow penetrating my armoured thigh. All goes black.

Waking, submerged deep in thick fluid, I hear distant voices. “Subject ready for phase 4”, they say.