‘I know it’s not exactly normal operational procedure,’ Antoinette said. ‘Are you absolutely certain of this, Little Miss?’ Antoinette reached into her shirt pocket and removed a shred of printed paper. It was oval, frayed and torn at the edges, with a complex design marked in lambent gold and silver inks. She fingered the scrap as if it were a talisman. ‘Yes, Beast,’ she said. ‘More certain than I’ve ever been of anything, ever.’ ‘Very well, Little Miss.’ Beast, obviously sensing that argument would get it nowhere, began to prepare for atmospheric flight. The schematics on the command board showed spines and clamps being hauled in, hatches irising and sliding shut to maintain hull integrity. The process took several minutes, but when it was done Storm Bird looked only slightly more airworthy than it had before. Some of the remaining bulges and protrusions would survive the trip, but there were still a few spines and docking latches that would probably get ripped off when it hit air. Storm Bird would just have to manage without them. ‘Now listen,’ she said. ‘Somewhere in that brain of yours are the routines for in-atmosphere handling. Dad told me about them once, so don’t go pretending you’ve never heard of them.’ ‘One shall attempt to locate the relevant procedures with all haste.’ ‘Good,’ she said, encouraged. ‘But might one nonetheless enquire why the need for these routines was not mentioned earlier?’ ‘Because if you’d had any idea what I had in mind, you’d have had all the more time to talk me out of it.’ ‘One sees.’ ‘Don’t sound hurt about it. I was just being pragmatic’ ‘As you wish, Little Miss.’ Beast paused just long enough to make her feel guilty and hurtful. ‘One has located the routines. One respectfully points out that they were last used sixty-three years ago, and that there have been a number of changes to the hull profile since then which may limit the efficacy of…’ ‘Fine. I’m sure you’ll improvise.’ But it was no simple thing to persuade a ship of vacuum to skim an atmosphere, even the upper atmospheric layer of a gas giant — even a ship as generously armoured and rounded as hers. At best, Storm Bird would come through this with some heavy hull damage that would still allow her to limp home to the Rust Belt. At worst, the ship would never see open space again. And nor, in all likelihood, would Antoinette. Well, she thought, at least there was one consolation: if she trashed the ship, she would never have to break the bad news to Xavier. So much for small mercies. There was a muted chime from the panel. ‘Beast…’ Antoinette said, ‘was that what I thought it was?’ ‘Very possibly, Little Miss. Radar contact, eighteen thousand klicks distant, three degrees off dead ahead; two degrees off ecliptic north.’ ‘Fuck. Are you certain it isn’t a beacon or weapons platform?’ ‘Too large to be either, Little Miss.’ She did not need to do any mental arithmetic to work out what that meant. There was another ship between them and the top of the gas giant; another ship close to the atmosphere. ‘What can you tell me about it?’ ‘It’s moving slowly, Little Miss, on a direct course for the atmosphere. Looks rather as if it’s planning to execute a similar manoeuvre to the one you have in mind, although they’re moving several klicks per second faster and their approach angle is considerably steeper.’ ‘Sounds like a zombie — you don’t think it is, do you?’ she said quickly, hoping to convince herself otherwise. ‘No need to speculate, Little Miss. The ship has just locked a tight-beam on to us. The message protocol is indeed Demarchist.’ ‘Why the fuck are they bothering to tight-beam us?’ ‘One respectfully suggests you find out.’ A tight-beam was a needlessly finicky means of communication when two ships were so close. A simple radio broadcast would have worked just as well, removing the need for the zombie ship to point its message laser exactly at the moving target of Storm Bird . ‘Acknowledge whoever it is,’ she ordered. ‘Can we tight-beam them back?’ ‘Not without redeploying something one just went to rather a lot of trouble to retract, Little Miss.’ ‘Then do it, but don’t forget to haul it back in afterwards.’ She heard the machinery push one of the spines back into vacuum. There was a rapid chirp of message protocols between the two ships and then suddenly Antoinette was looking at the face of another woman. She looked, if such a thing were possible, more tired, drawn and edgy than Antoinette felt. ‘Hello,’ Antoinette said. ‘Can you see me as well?’ The woman’s nod was barely perceptible. Her tight-lipped face suggested vast reserves of pent-up fury, like water straining behind a dam. ‘Yes. I can see you.’ ‘I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone out here,’ Antoinette offered. ‘I thought it might not be a bad idea to respond by tight-beam as well.’ ‘You may as well not have bothered.’ ‘Not have bothered?’ Antoinette echoed. ‘Not after your radar already illuminated us.’ The woman’s shaven scalp gleamed blue as she looked down at something. She did not appear to be very much older than Antoinette, but with zombies you could never be sure. ‘Urn… and that’s a problem, is it?’ ‘It is when we’re trying to hide from something. I don’t know why you’re out here, and frankly I don’t much care. I suggest that you abort whatever you’re planning. The Jovian is a Contested Volume, which means that I’d be fully within my rights to blast you out of the sky right now.’ ‘I don’t have a problem with zom… with Demarchists,’ Antoinette said. ‘I’m delighted to hear it. Now turn around.’ Antoinette glanced down again at the piece of
