They showed him to the spacesuit locker. The suits were of Demarchist design, all ribbed silvery-red metal, and while they were neither more nor less technologically advanced than Conjoiner suits, everything worked differently on them. Clavain could not have put the suit on without the assistance of Voi and Perotet. Once the helmet had latched shut, the faceplate border lit up with a dozen unfamiliar status read-outs, worming traces and shifting histograms labelled with acronyms that meant nothing to Clavain. Periodically a small, polite feminine voice would whisper something in his ear. Most of the traces were green rather than red, which he took to be a good sign.
‘I keep thinking this must be a trap,’ Voi said. ‘Something you’d always planned. That you meant to come aboard our ship and then be rescued. Perhaps you’ve done something to us, or planted something…’
‘Everything I told you was true,’ Clavain said. ‘I don’t know who those people outside are, and I don’t know what they want with me. They could be Conjoiners, but if they are, their arrival’s nothing I’ve planned.’
‘I wish I could believe you.’
‘I admired Sandra Voi. I hoped that my knowing her might help my cause with you. I was perfectly sincere about that.’
‘If they are Conjoiners… will they kill you?’
‘I don’t know. I think they might have done that already, if that was what they wanted. I don’t think Skade would have spared you, but perhaps I’m misjudging her. If indeed it is Skade…’ Clavain shuffled into the airlock. ‘I’d best be going. I hope they leave you alone once they see I’m outside.’
‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’
Clavain smiled. ‘Is it that obvious?’
‘It makes me think you might not be lying. The information you gave us…’
‘You really should act on it.’
He stepped into the lock. Voi did the rest. The traces on the faceplate registered the shift to vacuum. Clavain heard his suit creak and click in unfamiliar ways as it adjusted to space. The outer door heaved open on heavy pistons. He could see nothing but a rectangle of darkness. No stars; no worlds; no Rust Belt. Not even the marauding ships.
It always took courage to step out of any spacecraft, most especially in the absence of any means of returning. Clavain judged that single footstep and push-off to be amongst the two or three hardest things he had ever done in his life.
But it had to be done.
He was outside. He turned slowly, the claw-shaped Demarchist shuttle coming into view and then passing by him. It was unharmed, save for one or two scorch marks on the hull where it had been struck by scalding fragments from the escort ships. On the sixth or seventh turn the engines pulsed and the shuttle began to put increasing distance between itself and him. Good. There was no sense sacrificing himself if Voi did not take advantage of it.
He waited. Perhaps four minutes passed before he became aware of the other ships. Evidently they had moved away after the attack. There were three of them, as Perotet and Voi had thought.
Their hulls were black, stencilled with neon skulls, eyes and sharks’ teeth. Now and then a thruster aperture would bark a pulse of steering gas, and the flash would pick out more details, limning the sleek curves of transatmospheric surfaces and the cowled muzzles of retractable weapons or hinged grappling gear. The weapons could be packed away and the ships would look innocent enough: sleek rich kids’ toys, but nothing you would bet on against armed Convention escorts.
One of the three banshees broke from the pack and loomed large. A yellow-lit airlock irised open in the belly of her hull. Two figures bustled out, black as space themselves. They jetted towards Clavain and braked expertly when they were on the point of colliding with him. Their spacesuits were like their ships: civilian in origin but augmented with armour and weapons. They made no effort to speak to him on the suit channel; all he heard as he was snared and taken aboard the black ship was the repetitious soft voice of the suit subpersona.
There was just room for the three of them in the belly airlock. Clavain looked for markings on the suits of the other two, but even up close they were perfectly black. The faceplate visors were heavily tinted, so that all he caught was the occasional flash of an eye.
His status indicators shifted again, registering the return of air pressure. The inner door irised open and he was pushed forwards into the main body of the black ship. The spacesuited pair followed him. Once they were inside, their helmets detached themselves automatically and flew away to storage points. Two men had brought him aboard the ship. They could easily have been twins, even down to the nearly identical broken nose on each face. One of the men had a gold ring through one eyebrow, the other through the lobe of one ear. Both were bald except for an exceptionally narrow line of dyed-green hair that bisected their skulls from temple to nape. They wore wraparound tortoiseshell goggles and neither man had any trace of a mouth.
The one with the ring through his eyebrow motioned to Clavain that he should remove his own helmet. Clavain shook his head, unwilling to do that until he was certain that he was in breathable air. The man shrugged and reached for something racked on the wall. It was a bright-yellow axe.
Clavain raised a hand and began to fiddle with the connecting latch of the Demarchist suit. He could not find the release mechanism. After a moment the man with the pierced ear shook his head and brushed Clavain’s hand aside. He worked the latch and the soft voice in Clavain’s ear became shriller, more insistent. The status displays flicked mostly into red.
The helmet came off with a gasp of air. Clavain’s ears popped. The pressure on the black ship was not quite Demarchist standard. He breathed cold air, his lungs working hard.
‘Who… who are you?’ he asked, when he had the energy for words.
The man with the pierced eyebrow replaced the yellow axe on the wall. He drew a finger across his own throat.
Then another voice, one that Clavain did not recognise, said, ‘Hello.’
Clavain looked around. The third person also wore a spacesuit, though it was much less cumbersome than the suits worn by her fellows. Despite its bulk she still managed to appear thin and spare. She hovered within the frame of a bulkhead door, resting calmly with her head cocked slightly to one side. Perhaps it was the play of light on her face, but Clavain thought he saw ghostly blades of faded black against the perfect white of her skin.
‘I hope the Talkative Twins treated you well, Mr Clavain.’
‘Who are you?’ Clavain said again.
‘I am Zebra. That’s not my real name, of course. You won’t ever need to know my real name.’
‘Who are you, Zebra? Why have you done this?’
‘Because I was told to. What did you expect?’
‘I didn’t expect anything. I was trying…’ He paused and waited until his breath had returned. ‘I was trying to defect.’
‘We know.’
‘We?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough. Come with me, Mr Clavain. Twins, secure and prepare for high-burn. The Convention will be swarming like flies by the time we get back to Yellowstone. It’s going to be an interesting trip home.’
‘I’m not worth killing innocent people for.’
‘No one died, Mr Clavain. The two Convention escorts we destroyed were remotes, slaved to the third. We wounded the third, but its pilot won’t have been harmed. And we conspicuously avoided harming the zombies’ shuttle. Did they make you step outside, I wonder?’
He followed her forwards, through the bulkhead into a flight deck area. There was only one other person aboard as far as Clavain could tell: a wizened-looking man strapped into the pilot’s position. He was not wearing a suit. His ancient age-spotted hands gripped the controls like prehensile twigs.
‘What do you think?’ Clavain asked.
‘It’s possible they might have, but I think it more likely that you chose to leave.’
‘It doesn’t matter now, does it? You’ve got me.’
The ancient man glanced at Clavain with only a flicker of interest. ‘Normal insertion, Zebra, or do we take the long way home?’
‘Follow the normal corridor, Manoukhian, but be ready to deviate. I don’t want to engage the Convention
