‘Hoopers don’t fall off masts,’ Erlin replied succinctly.

The Golem peered down at the fallen man, who was now slapping the side of his head with his one good hand to straighten up his eyeballs. ‘He didn’t fall. He was pushed.’

Janer looked up to where the Golem sail was crawling down the mast like a huge iron vampire bat. It was swinging its head from side to side, and a turquoise glow kept advancing and retreating in its eyes.

‘Shit,’ muttered Janer. ‘What the hell is the matter with him?’

‘Ah,’ said Wade, ‘my other half seems to be experiencing a little internal dispute.’

‘Might be an idea to move away from here,’ suggested Janer, aware that the turquoise glow was the emission from a particle cannon being taken on- and off-line. At that moment the sail let out a long shriek which seemed to penetrate all the way down the length of Janer’s spine. It then launched itself from the mast, spreading mono-fabric wings with a snapping sound, and gliding away from the ship. It turned in mid-air and turquoise fire flashed down. There came an explosion from below and the sounds of hot metal skittering across the deck. Janer and Wade ran to the deckhouse rail, to again see that fire flash from Zephyr’s eyes, this time striking further along the ship.

‘He seems to have come to a decision,’ Wade observed.

More shots blasted from the sail as it winged around the ship. Janer tilted his head to listen to the sounds of destruction from the other side. ‘I don’t think you’ll need to shut down the autolasers—that’s what he’s doing for you.’

‘He’s probably decided they represent Death,’ said Wade, then spoke into the comlink: ‘Erlin, we’ll be bringing the injured party down to you. Ron, are you seeing this?’

‘What’s that bugger doing to my ship?’ came the Captain’s reply.

‘Destroying the autolasers.’

‘I bloody well know that. Why is it doing that?’

‘I don’t know, but you better get the hatches locked down and the stairwells closed, as per plan. Erlin, stay in the Tank Rooms and keep the doors closed. Are you armed?’

‘I am now.’

Wade indicated the Hooper. ‘I’ll carry him. You watch my back.’

They reached the nearest mainmast stairwell just as Janer saw, down on the main deck below, the first pink rhino head, sans horns, peering over the rail. He shot it through the mouth before it got a chance to progress any further, then himself followed the Golem into the stairwell, engaging the door lock behind them.

With the Hooper slung over his shoulder, Wade addressed his comlink again. ‘Can’t see what’s going on at the moment, Ron. What’s happening?’

‘We’ve got a few strays coming aboard, but the main mass at the waterline is dropping away. Gonna fire up the engines in about ten minutes. Ah… Huff and Puff just joined in. Nothing they like better than a bit of fresh rhinoworm—barring the odd Batian head, in Huff’s case.’

‘Okay, you lot up on the masts, concentrate your fire around any open hatches or stairwells. We can’t afford to let these bastards inside the ship.’

Janer wondered just when Wade had been appointed military commander of this ship, and whether that was such a good idea.

Meeting them in the upper Tank Room, Erlin led the way to one of the restraint tables, this one with its restraints removed and an autodoc folded down underneath on the end of a jointed arm. As soon as the Hooper was down on his back, she pulled the chrome autodoc out and up so it was poised just to one side of the man’s waist. ‘What age Hooper are you?’

‘Hundred twenty,’ he replied. He was staring at the autodoc as if wanting to get as far away from it as possible. Obviously he was a Hooper who had yet to stray into the territory occupied by the likes of Forlam or the crew of the Vignette. Janer understood his feelings, for despite having been operated upon by such autodocs himself, he was still wary of the things. Perhaps it was some primordial instinct impinging—the atavistic fear of insects. This particular doc looked something like a shiny metal horseshoe crab, only with longer legs which were possessed of more joints and terminated in a variety of surgical instruments.

‘I’ve got to straighten this leg and that arm.’ Erlin flipped up a lid in the doc’s back, revealing a small console with a port for a memory tab. ‘If they heal like that, you’ll be crippled for the next couple of years until they straighten out naturally.’ Out of her top pocket she took a cylindrical container and pulled from it thumbnail-sized crystal tabs. Selecting one, she placed it in the port, then tapped instructions into the console. The tab contained enough memory storage to encompass a human life—similar tabs formed the basis of memplants.

‘Is it gonna hurt?’ The man tried to pull himself further away as die doc wiggled its multitude of legs.

‘I can’t inject you with anything. Even if I could get the injection in, the analgesic wouldn’t spread quickly enough anyway. But I’ve been well-supplied here.’ She held up a simple grey cube between her forefinger and thumb. Before the man could say anything more, she pressed it against the side of his neck.

The Hooper lay there blinking for a moment, then said, ‘I can’t feel me body—it’s like when I broke me back.’

‘Do you really want to feel it right now?’

‘Guess not.’

Turning to Janer and Wade, Erlin said, ‘I had to make a few alterations to the nerve-blocker. It needs stronger nanofilaments to be able to penetrate Hooper flesh through to the spine.’

‘And the doc?’ Janer asked.

‘Programmed for removing reification hardware initially, but I reprogrammed it to Hooper physiology.’ She closed the lid over the console in which she had inserted the crystal tab. ‘I’ve been studying Hoopers for quite a while now, and have operated on many of them. What I just put in here contains everything at variance to standard human biology from Hooper babies right up to Old Captains. He’—she stabbed a thumb at the prostrate Hooper—‘won’t need anything to seal severed blood vessels, only arteries, and the doc won’t touch any of them. But it will need to clamp open its incisions, and work fast to ensure the job is done before those incisions start healing while still open.’

‘That’s fascinating,’ said Janer, turning to watch the autodoc swing down the length of the Hooper’s body, abruptly slice open the man’s trousers, and then the calf muscle of his mangled leg, right down to the bone. ‘You won’t be needing any help?’

Erlin shook her head.

The doc was now cutting between fragments of shattered greyish bone that were already knitting together.

‘Then perhaps we should go back outside and help the others.’ He looked questioningly at Wade.

The Golem bore a curiously twisted expression Janer could not fathom. Internal communication? After a moment, Wade nodded and turned away.

‘Best lock the door behind us,’ he suggested.

Vrell eased his ship higher in the ocean until its weapons turrets were completely clear of the surface, meanwhile recharging the massive capacitors feeding the two particle cannons. He kept his weapons aligned with the location of Vrost’s ship, ready to again vaporize anything fired by the coil-gun. Other weapons he laser-ranged on numerous objects dropping through the atmosphere.

Things were turning nasty here.

Through the senses of his alternate self, Vrell observed its battle with the Polity drone. Overhearing the latest communication between the Warden and Vrost, Vrell guessed who that other drone must be, even though it now inhabited a different shell. Its subsequent familiar tactics confirmed this suspicion, but the danger it represented was minimal. He was aware of how its previous attack on this ship had only succeeded by a narrow margin and, should it try again, Vrell would burn it from the sky. Its previous success had only been due to Father’s thrall codes being subverted, so that Ebulan, being attacked by his own blanks, was distracted at the critical moment. Vrell, however, would not be distracted, and his only vulnerable code transmissions, to those aboard the ocean-going vessel now only a few hundred kilometres from him, he could break instantly. Ebulan’s mistake had been in thinking those codes unbreakable. But Vrell, having ventured into the realm of higher mathematics, knew no code was unbreakable. No, the greatest danger to him was still Vrost. He sent a summons to his own drone, and levelled one weapons array to cover it. He would need all of his resources if he was to survive this.