There was debris. A dump of bodies and all the material from the Changer base, plus the extra equipment brought in by the Idirans and the Free Company, and the husk of the chuy-hirtsi warp animal, all lay buried under kilometres of glacial ice near one of the planet's poles. Compressed into a tight ball of mangled wreckage and frozen, mutilated bodies, amongst the effects cleared from that part of the defunct Changer base which had been the cabin of the woman Kierachell there was a small plastic book with real pages covered in tiny writing. It was a tale of fantasy, the woman's favourite book, and the first page of the story began with these words:

The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two…

The Mind rescued from the tunnels of the Command System could remember nothing from the period between its warp into the tunnels and its eventual repair and refit aboard the GSV No More Mr Nice Guy, following its rescue by Perosteck Balveda. It was later installed in an Ocean class GSV and survived the war despite taking part in many important space battles. Modified, it was subsequently replaced into a Range class GSV, taking its — slightly unusual — chosen name with it.

The Changers were wiped out as a species during the final stages of the war in space.

Epilogue

Gimishin Foug, breathless, late as usual, sizeably pregnant, and who just happened to be a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandniece of Perosteck Balveda (as well as a budding poet), arrived on board the General Systems Vehicle an hour after the rest of her family. The vehicle had picked them up from the remote planet in the greater Cloud where they'd been holidaying, and was due to take them and a few hundred other people to the vast new System class GSV Determinist, which would shortly be making the crossing from the Clouds to the main galaxy.

Foug was less interested in the journey itself than in the craft she would be travelling on. She hadn't encountered a System class before, and secretly hoped the scale of the vessel, with its many separate components riding suspended inside a bubble of air two hundred kilometres long, and its complement of six billion souls, would provide her with some new inspiration. She was excited at the idea, and preoccupied with her new size and responsibility, but she remembered, if a little late, to be polite as she arrived on board the much smaller Range class vehicle.

"I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced," she said as she disembarked from the module in a gently lit Smallbay. She was talking to a remote drone which was helping her with her baggage. "I'm Foug. What are you called?"

"I am the Bora Horza Gobuchul," the ship said, through the drone.

"That's a weird name. How did you end up calling yourself that?"

The remote drone dipped one front corner slightly, its equivalent of a shrug. "It's a long story…"

Gimishin Foug shrugged;

"I like long stories."

END