‘Might I ask why?’ ‘Yes, although I was hoping you wouldn’t. Scorp has more experience of hand-to-hand combat than you do, almost more than me. But the main reason is I don’t trust you enough to have you inside.’ ‘You trusted me to come this far.’ ‘And I’m prepared to trust you to sit tight on the shuttle until we get out.’ Clavain checked the time. ‘In thirty-five minutes we’re out of return range. Wait half an hour and then leave. Not a minute more, even if Scorp and I are already coming back out of the airlock.’ ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ ‘We’ve budgeted enough fuel to return the three of us plus Felka. If you return alone you’ll have fuel to spare — fuel that we’ll badly need later. That’s what I trust you with, Rem: that responsibility.’ ‘But not to come aboard,’ Remontoire said. ‘No. Not with Skade on that ship. I can’t run the risk of you defecting back to her side.’ ‘You’re wrong, Clavain.’ ‘Am I?’ ‘I didn’t defect. Neither did you. It was Skade and the rest of them that changed sides, not us.’ ‘C’mon,’ Scorpio said, tugging at Clavain’s arm. ‘We’ve got twenty-nine minutes now.’ The two of them crossed over to Nightshade . Clavain fumbled around the rim of the airlock until he found the nearly invisible recess that concealed the external controls. It was just wide enough to take his gloved hand. He felt the familiar trinity of manual switches — standard Conjoiner design — and tugged them to the open position. Even if there had been a general shipwide power failure, cells within the lock would have retained power to open the door for about a century. Even if that failed, there was a manual mechanism on the other side of the rim. The door slid aside. Blood-red lighting glared back from the interior chamber. His eyes had become highly dark-adapted. He waited for them to adjust to the brightness and then ushered Scorpio into the generously proportioned space. He followed the pig, their bulky suits knocking together, and then sealed and pressurised the chamber. It took an eternity. The inner door opened. The interior of the ship was bathed in the same blood-red emergency lighting. But at least there was power. That meant there might be survivors, too. Clavain studied the ambient data read-out in his faceplate field of view, then turned off his suit air and slid up the faceplate. These clumsy old suits, the best that Zodiacal Light had been able to provide, had limited air and power, and he saw no sense in wasting resources. He motioned for Scorpio to do likewise. The pig whispered, ‘Where are we?’ ‘Amidships,’ Clavain told him in a normal speaking voice. ‘But everything looks different in this light, and without gravity. The ship doesn’t feel as familiar as I had expected. I wish I knew how many crew we could expect to find.’ ‘Skade never gave any indication?’ he hissed back. ‘No. You could run a ship like this with a few experts, and no more. There’s no need to whisper either, Scorp. If there’s anyone around to know we’re here, they know we’re here.’ ‘Remind me why we didn’t come with guns?’ ‘No point, Scorp. They’d have heavier and better armaments here. Either we take Felka painlessly or we negotiate our way out.’ Clavain tapped his utility belt. ‘Of course, we do have a negotiating aid.’ They had brought pinheads aboard Skade’s ship. The microscopic fragments of antimatter suspended in a pin-sized containment system, which was in turn shielded within a thumb-sized armoured grenade, would blow Nightshade cleanly out of the sky. They moved down the red-lit corridor hand over hand. Every now and then, randomly, one of them would unclip a pinhead device, smear it with epoxy and push it into place in a corner or shadow. Clavain was confident that a well-organised search would be able to locate all the pinheads in a few tens of minutes. But a well-organised search looked like exactly the kind of thing the ship was not going to be capable of mounting for quite some time. They had been working their way along for eight minutes when Scorpio broke the silence. They had reached a trifurcation in the corridor. ‘Recognise anything yet?’ ‘Yes. We’re near the bridge.’ Clavain pointed one way. ‘But the reefersleep chamber is down here. If she has Felka frozen, that’s where she might be. We’ll check it first.’ ‘We’ve got twenty minutes, then we have to be out.’ Clavain knew that the time limit was, in a sense, artificially imposed. Zodiacal Light could backtrack and recover the shuttle even if they delayed their departure, but only at a wasteful expenditure of time, one that would instil a lethal seed of complacency into the rest of the crew. He had considered the risks and concluded that it would be better for all three of them to die — or at least be marooned here — rather than let that happen. Their deputies and sub- deputies could continue the operation even if Remontoire did not make it back alive, and they had to believe that every second really counted. As indeed it did. It was tough. But that was war, and it was a long way from the toughest decision Clavain had ever had to make. They worked their way down to the reefersleep chamber. ‘Something ahead,’ Scorpio said, after they had crawled and clambered wordlessly for several minutes. Clavain slowed his progress, peering into the same red gloom, envious of Scorpio’s augmented eyesight. ‘Looks like a body,’ he said. They approached it carefully, pulling themselves along from one padded wall-staple to another. Clavain was mindful of every minute that elapsed; every half- minute of each minute; every cruel second. They reached the body. ‘Do you recognise it?’ Scorpio asked, fascinated. ‘I’m not sure whether anyone would be able to recognise it for certain,’ Clavain said, ‘but it isn’t Felka. I don’t think it could have been Skade, either.’ Something dreadful had happened to the body. It had been sliced down the middle, exactly and neatly, in the fastidious fashion of an anatomical model. The interior organs were packed into tightly coiled or serpentine formations, glistening like glazed sweetmeats. Scorpio reached out a gloved trotter and pushed the half-figure; it drifted slackly away from the slick walling where it had come to rest. ‘Where do you think the rest of it is?’ he asked. ‘Somewhere else,’ Clavain replied. ‘This half must have drifted here.’ ‘What did that to it? I’ve seen what beam-weapons
