"Greg!" Suzi yelled frantically. She was pointing out of the window.

The plane was descending into view about two hundred metres away, a delta planform with a long bullet nose. Not easy to see, an elusive light-grey stealth coating seemed to slither when he tried to focus on it, pulling the uniform blueness of sea and sky around the flat fuselage like a cloak.

"That's a Messerschmitt CTV-663," Suzi said grimly. "Armed hypersonic military transport. Bollocks; Leol could be carrying up to twenty-five troops in that bastard."

Greg watched it halt level with the gondola, then turn ponderously until its tail was pointing at him. The rear loading ramp lowered. Indistinct shapes moved inside. Something dropped off the end of the ramp, falling for a few metres then slowing, bobbing in midair. It began to rise. Human shaped, but bulky, dark. A second one fell from the ramp.

"Holy shitfire," Suzi gasped. "They're wearing jetpacks. Jet-packs and muscle-armour suits. The fuckers are gonna storm us."

"Greg, I can't see what's going on," Julia's image said. "You must squirt me into the Colonel Maitland's 'ware. I can help you from there."

"Against them?" Suzi shouted.

"Where's a key?" Greg demanded.

Jason Whitehurst stared at him uncomprehendingly, shocked into stupefaction by the aerial assault.

"A bloody interface key!"

Five dark figures were hanging in the air between the Messerschmitt and the Colonel Maitland, wobbling slightly as they approached, picking up speed. Another two jumped from the plane's loading ramp.

The two hardliners in the study were fingering their carbines nervously.

"Don't shoot, for Christ's sake," Greg told them. "Lasers aren't going to puncture muscle-armour suits at this distance; all you'll do is pinpoint us for them." He ran round the settee to the desk, and held up his cybofax. "Try a squirt now," he told Julia. The tiny lenticular key on the top of the cybofax winked with ruby light. There was an answering pulse from the middle of the desk. When he looked at the wafer's screen her face had gone.

Suzi had the tight-jawed expression he'd seen on squaddies in Turkey, the one put on just before combat, the one which said it wasn't going to be me, no way. Her nostrils flared.

"The girl?"

"Yeah. Find her and steer clear of the tekmercs. Twenty minutes, that's all, and this is a big ship." He took a deep breath, psychological more than anything, and ordered up a full secretion.

The cold reptilian gland vibrated away, rattling his brain from the inside. His espersense swept outwards; a spectral silhouette of the airship filling his perception, a cobweb of struts enfolded by bottomless shadow. Minds glowed within, pure thought turning to light, fluctuating with emotion. He was bathed in an exodus of fear, and confusion, and hurt from the crew; their silent unbosoming. Soiling him; he hated people for their failings, he was always so careful to filter it out, pretend it didn't exist. The only way he could move through life.

He examined each of them, and found the mind he knew must be hers. It had the brightness of youth, tight thought currents that spoke of strong self-control, an underlying theme of resentment and longing. The silver-white study rushed back in on him. "Got her."

"Thank Christ for that," Suzi said.

"Let's move."

The two hardliners didn't try and stop them. He turned back when he reached the door, and saw ten armour-clad figures in the air. Jason Whitehurst's face was profiled against the window. "Keep her away from my son, Mandel. Please. None of this is his doing."

"You got it."

The door slid shut.

"This way," he said, and began to jog towards the stern. "Fielder's up inside the fuselage, some sort of room near the tail. We need to be up. Look for some stairs, an inspection hatch, something."

"Got it," Suzi barked.

He nearly smiled. She was fighting off fear with action, needing orders, a goal. It wasn't such a bad idea. He began to scan the names printed on the doors.

They ran into an espersense sweep. It registered like a curtain of cold air brushing against his body. Goose bumps rose on his arms.

"Shit!"

"What?" Suzi's Browning came up in reflex.

"Chad." Greg pulled the old Mindstar-training memories from his brain, looking for something he could use. This time Chad would be ready, and he was strong; Greg couldn't afford a straight trial of strength. He let loose the neurohormones, and—

— reality flickered—

— and Chad felt two familiar minds impinge on his expanded sphere of consciousness. He recoiled in alarm. Then, furious with himself, opened up the sacs' extravasation rate.

The neurohormone boost was almost a physical jolt, sacs acting like electrical terminals, hot and bright, charging his brain with energy, leaving his body buzzing inside the unyielding formfit grip of the muscle armour. His espersense pushed through the airship's hull like an eldritch radar, and closed around the two minds again. Contact made the skin in his palms itch.

He concentrated on the squirming thought currents, relating his espersense perception with his visual field. His view of the outside world was being relayed from the muscle armour's integral photon amp. The airship and its gondola had taken on a bluish-grey tint, overlaid with a tactical display—distance, speed, power reserves—the lower-deck target window was outlined in red. Numbers constantly changing.

"Squad leader," he told the muscle armour 'ware. A green go-ahead dot appeared in the communication section of the tactical display. "Leol. Couple of our friends on board. Suzi, and that Mindstar bastard, Mandel." He was aware of Reiger's mental flare of excitement, the unclean glee.

"Yeah? Well don't fuck up like last time, my boy, or I'll kick your arse into orbit," Reiger said.

"Not a chance. He pulled a fast one back in the Prezda, that's all, won't work twice."

"OK, well, get this straight, that bitch Suzi is mine."

"Sure thing, Leol."

"Where is she?"

"Upper deck, twenty metres from the prow."

"What about the Fielder girl?"

"Cabin on the lower gondola deck, right at the stern." He heard Leol Reiger issuing a stream of instructions to the rest of the squad. There were none for him, Reiger was leaving him free to deal with Mandel.

He saw the first two squad members were about twenty metres from the gondola, actually under the bulk of the airship's vast fuselage. The leader lifted his Lockheed rip gun, and fired at the target window. The shot was like a rigid bolt of lightning, two metres long. A section of the gondola hull around the oblong window simply blew apart, leaving a jagged gap three metres wide.

The first squad member flew straight in, never even touching the sharp composite fangs round the edge of the gap. The rest of the squad were clustering round outside, passing through the gap one at a time, like black, hyped-up hornets sliding into their nest.

Chad tilted his jockey-stick, veering off to one side. The jetpack nozzles behind his shoulders rotated slightly, realigning him. He brought his own rip gun up. The armour's muscle-band lining made the movement effortless. A targeting graphic traversed the side of the gondola. He halted the motion when it had centred on a window a couple of metres behind Mandel. He fired.

The window vaporized instantly, enveloped in a blinding fireball. Chad's photon lamp blanked out for a second, protecting his eyes from the violent light burst. He jigged about in the blastwave.

When his vision came back on line the window and its surround was a rough-edged crater. A jumble of broken struts and disfigured decking lay inside.

He twisted the jockey-stick for full acceleration, heading straight for it. Another coherent lightning bolt from the rip gun tore out a chunk of the cabin's interior wall. A cloud of scorched fragments fluttered round him and he slammed in through the hole he'd made. He jerked the jockey-stick back savagely, killing speed. His feet landed on the decking, and he ran at the narrow rent in the cabin wall ahead.