‘Stop the ship or I kill Erlin!’ Bloc shouted.

‘You forget,’ said Erlin, ‘I’m a Hooper.’ She reached back, grabbed Bones and ducked down, throwing him. He landed near Ron and shot upright again. Ron backhanded him with such force he flew in a flat trajectory out of the window, after the Kladites. Erlin stood clutching a hand to her bloody throat. She spat some blood and grinned, exposing gory teeth.

The ship seemed to be tilting, then Bloc realized that no, it was turning. The Prador spaceship must have dropped down to pass under it, for to his left one of the low turrets was generating its own wake. What could he do now? The Prador had abandoned him, and now a void was opening in his consciousness. His attention swinging to Santen and Styx, he raised his carbine and fired. Santen stepped quickly in front of Styx, and staggered back gazing down at her burning chest, then up at Styx who had caught her.

‘You think… I didn’t guess,’ she said to him, smoke issuing from her mouth.

MEMSPACE: 00005

Styx lowered her to the floor, her hardware obviously damaged for she showed no further signs of moving. Bloc swung his carbine from right to left, trying to cover everyone remaining in the bridge.

‘All your dreams, Bloc’ Styx shook his head as he stood. ‘I think, before you shoot me and Ron subsequently rips your head off, I’d like to tell you more about myself and my investigations.’

‘What’s… to know?’ asked Bloc dismissively.

‘Well, I’m a policeman,’ said Styx.

‘So? There is no law out here.’

‘Yes.’ Styx carefully held up his left hand and pulled back the sleeve to expose an antique watch. So as not to get anyone too excited he slowly reached out, pressed buttons on the side of it to change the display, then pressed his thumb against that display.

What now?

Travelling out from either side of the wristband, a fizzing light spread like embers on fuse paper, across John Styx’s shrivelled skin. Behind this fire, his skin seemed to inflate, till it adopted the normal healthy texture of a living human being’s. Though Bloc recognized some very sophisticated chameleonware effect, he could not understand the why of it.

The light fizzed to the tips of Styx’s fingers and went out. It travelled up his arm and into his sleeve, lighting his clothing from inside as it spread all the way around his body. Eventually it reached his collar, travelled up his neck and over his face, revealing living human features.

Something familiar…

Bloc tried to dismiss the thought. Everyone knew that the longer you lived, the more readily your brain catalogued people by type, till everyone began to look familiar. Then it hit him so hard, the realization of who now faced him, that he lost his last shreds of control. He sank down on his knees.

‘Well bugger me,’ said Ron. ‘That policeman.’

The man stepped calmly forward, tugged the laser carbine from Bloc’s limp grasp and turned the weapon to shove it against his chest. The carbine was pointed slightly to one side, precisely at where Bloc’s crystal was located. It was all too much.

OUTPARAFUNCT: B.P. LOAD INC. 100 %

WARN: EXTREMITY PROBES NIL BALM LA71-94, LH 34–67…

WARN: ALL E-PROBES REG. VIRAL INFECT.

MEMSPACE: 00002

One after another, warning messages were now scrolling up before his inner vision and he seemed unable to shut them down. The next thing Bloc knew he was flat on his back staring through a flood of artificial tears at the roof of the bridge.

‘How does it feel to have a ship named after you?’ asked Captain Ron.

‘Well, I’m honoured of course,’ replied the man standing over Bloc.

MEMSPACE: 00000

OVERLOAD: CRYSTAL SAFETY MODE

Blackness.

The retracting weapons turret was closing the gap. Ignoring what injuries he might cause the two crewmen, Wade shoved them up through it then followed them. The spaceship was moving lower in the sea now, the blast of its turbines stirring up a great wall of silt specked with glittering shoals of boxies, whose cubic bodies seeming like pixel faults in a solid holographic display. The Sable Keech was now a few metres up, sliding over, driven by its own screws. The submersible port had to be some distance ahead of him, and there was no way he could swim to it encumbered with his present load. His APW strapped across his back, he quickly tore off his gloves, boots, then the syntheflesh coverings of his hands and feet revealing his skeletal metal fingers and toes. In his left hand he grabbed the cables binding the wrists of the two crewmen, squatted, then drove himself upwards off the Prador ship. Two metres up and the keel of the Sable Keech was speeding immediately over him. He closed his free hand on the keel’s edge, sliding and tearing up splinters, drove his fingers in, then brought up his feet and drove in his toes. The current’s drag threatened to dislodge him, until he released the crewmen, quickly stabbed his hand underneath the cable binding their wrists and slid it along his arm till the pair were dangling from its crook, then took a grip of the keel with his other hand. Now to climb.

Pulling free his right hand he reached up and drove it into the woodwork again, then one foot, then the other hand, the other foot. With painful slowness he began working his way out from the keel, across an upcurving ceiling of planking the size of a sports field. The two crewmen rode back along his arm until they were hanging from around his shoulder. Boxies zipped past as the ship accelerated, then a passing turbul closed its jaws on one crewman’s foot and Wade had to drive his fingers deeper into timber to prevent himself being dragged from the hull. The creature finally separated from its prey, though it took the foot with it.

Wade could have moved very much faster without his burden, but even though needing to get aboard the ship with some urgency, he stubbornly held onto the two rescued Hoopers.

Zephyr, wait for me. There’s something more you need to know.

It was a lie, but might be enough to delay the Golem sail, even though the threat of weapons fire from the Prador ship was growing less.

I have seen enough, said Zephyr. Life is at constant warwith Death, and I will strike a blow in that campaign… It is none of your concern.

Wade realized, by that last comment, that Zephyr was also conducting a conversation with the two living sails. Perhaps they would delay the Golem sail. Now reaching the steeper curve up to the side of the ship, Wade observed white water above him. Not far to go now. Then things began bumping against him in the water: reddish-brown, swan-necked, with long flat bodies.

Oh, you have got to be kidding.

One of the leeches attached to his exposed ankle and, with an electric screwdriver sound, reamed out a chunk of his syntheflesh. The predator then fell away, writhing like a blood worm, and spat out the unsavoury mouthful. Others attached to the two crewmen, taking out chunks of them too, but unable to enjoy seconds as the current swept them away. Wade concentrated on the task in hand—talking to Zephyr just slowed him down. If he did not get the pair of them out of the water soon, he would be rescuing nothing more than what the Hoopers called stripped-fish.

Finally reaching the surface he began hauling himself up the sheer face of the hull. Twenty metres up he passed one of the square windows, from which a female reification observed him, perhaps with bemusement—there was no way to tell. He saw her turn away and begin punching touch-plates on her computer’s console. Meanwhile, to his right the remains of a laser turret projecting from the hull kept turning towards him, spraying sparks as if in frustration. Finally, fifteen metres from the rail, a face peered down at him. There came a bellowed ‘Over here!’ and shortly after a rope uncoiled down to him. Once he grabbed it, he and his load were hauled rapidly up the side. His supposition that some kind of winch was in use was proved wrong on discovering Captain Ron at the other end of the rope.