The flying boat hit the water, bounced in a double curtain of spray and hit again, stopping quickly and slewing round as it came to rest facing them, fifteen hundred metres away.

She slung the satchel onto her back and crawled away from the shore-side rocks, staying in the cover of some smaller boulders until she was near the trees; then she got up and ran in a crouch to where the others were lying just inside the cover, watching the ATs burn and the flying boat near the far shore sink. Its glassy, complicated nose was already raised in the air; one wing float was canted out of the water, the other submerged.

She dropped down beside them.

“Okay?” Zefla asked her.

“Yes. Nice shooting, Dloan,” she said, wiping her bloody hand on the trousers of her fatigues.

“Thanks,” Dloan grinned. “Fancy missile-intercepting laser couldn’t deal with old-fashioned cannon shells.” He sighed massively, looking happy.

“Yeah, but now what do we do?” Miz said, looking at her. “Swim the rest of the way?”

“Oh,” Feril said, “look. What unorthodox camouflage.”

Sharrow looked.

Zefla squinted through the field-glasses. She groaned.

“I don’t fucking believe it,” she said. She handed the binoculars to Sharrow. “No, that’s not true.” She shook her head. “I do believe it.”

Sharrow watched through glasses; the faceted nose of the flying boat was tipped high up now, pointing at the sky. From doors just under the wing roots she could see perhaps three dozen or so small figures clambering into what she guessed were inflatable boats. It all looked a little confused.

Sharrow could make the figures out easily because they were dressed in shocking pinks, lime-greens, blood-reds, loud-violets and bright-yellows that were even more vibrant and obvious than the orange boats they were packing into. She put the glasses down.

“They really are mad,” she said, more to herself than anybody else. “It’s Elson Roa and his gang.”

“That maniac?” Miz said, eyes wide. He gestured at the sinking plane, its fuselage now vertical to the sky and submerged almost to the wings. Two bright clusters of colour were just visible to the naked eye, heading slowly away from the sinking aircraft towards the thick green blanket of trees on the far shore. “That’s him?” Miz said. “Again?”

Sharrow nodded slowly, setting the field-glasses down on the ground. “Yes,” she said. “Again.”

The ammunition in the burning ATs continued to explode for a few minutes, then the fires began to die and the detonations ceased. They ventured out from the trees and searched the wreckage scattered round the remains of the two ATs until they heard a series of quiet phutting noises and saw thin fountains in the water nearby.

“Machine gun,” Dloan said, looking towards the far side of the fjord. The air cracked and whined; little clouds of dust jumped off rocks around them. They retreated quickly into the forest.

They had one light emergency tent and survival rations in a small back-pack Zefla had rescued; Sharrow had her satchel, which contained the HandCannon, the two dials from the old bike, and a first aid kit. Miz had rescued a medium machine gun and a single anti-aircraft missile. They’d found some clothes and a few more ration packs while they’d searched the wreckage. Apart from that, all they had was what they stood in; fatigues or hiking gear, a pistol each, a couple of knives, one small medical kit and whatever else had happened to be in their pockets.

“I should have thought,” Sharrow said, banging the heel of her hands off her temples. She winced as her left hand hit; she had washed the wound in a stream and put a plaster on it, but it still hurt. Miz still wore a small bandage on his hand, too, and Dloan limped a little, just as she did.

We are coming to reflect each other, she thought.

They sat in a small hollow, round a smoky, feeble fire they had finally lasered alight. The late afternoon was made evening by the tall trees rising around them.

“I should have thought,” she repeated. “We could have got more stuff together to take out of the ATs while we were looking for a place to hole up.” She shook her head.

“Look,” Miz said. “We’re all alive; we have a tent, some food, and we have guns; we can shoot what we need to eat.” He gestured at the forest around them. “There must be plenty of game in here. Or there’s fish.” He patted one pocket in his fancy, much be-pocketed hiking jacket. “I’ve got hooks and some line; we can make a rod.”

Sharrow looked dubious. “Yes. Meanwhile, we’ve got four days to walk two hundred klicks,” she said, “for a rendezvous our brave captain probably isn’t even going to try to make.”

“We could leave somebody here,” Zefla said. She held her combat cap out on a stick in front of the fire, drying it. She sat loosely cross-legged, at her ease.-Dloan had his injured leg out in front of him. Miz had rolled up a rock to sit on; the android squatted on its haunches, looking skeletally sharp and angled. “Some of us could go on to the end of the fjord,” Zefla continued, “while somebody stays behind to meet the sub and tell them to come back later.”

“We’ve nothing to signal with,” Sharrow said, taking her pocket phone out of her jacket. “The dedicated comm stuff was in the ATs and these won’t work here.”

“Well,” Dloan said, “technically they do, but the calls get transferred to the Security Franchise and they come to investigate the source.”

“Yes, Dloan,” Sharrow said. “Thank you.”

“I could signal the submarine,” Feril said. It tapped its chest. “I have a communicator; it’s not long range, but it need not utilise the phone frequencies. I could communicate with the submarine even when it is underwater, if it comes within a few kilometres.”

“Could you get in touch with it now?” Miz asked.

“I suspect not,” the android admitted.

“What about the Solipsists?” Dloan said. “Maybe they don’t realise who we are.” He looked at Sharrow. “We could try radioing them.”

She shook hear head. “Somehow, I think they know exactly who we are,” she said. “Anyway, it’s not worth breaking silence.”

“Oh, come on,” Miz said, poking at the fire with a branch. “The Franchise people can’t have missed that performance.” He nodded in the direction of the wrecked ATs, smouldering on the shore a hundred metres away through the trees. “They’re probably on their way in now to pick us up.”

“Of course,” Dloan said, “they might just nuke us instead.”

Sharrow glared at him.

“So do we hike to whatever’s at the end of the fjord, or what?” Zefla said.

Sharrow nodded. “We’d better, or Elson and his boys’ll get there first.”

She took the two bike dials from her satchel. “Still pointing that way; range is down to just under a hundred klicks. If the maps were right and these are accurate, whatever they’re pointing at is at the head of the fjord.” She put the dials away again. “Or was.”

“Pity we lost the maps,” Dloan said, flexing his leg.

“Actually,” Feril said, holding up one hand tentatively. “I have remembered the map of the area.”

“Oh yeah?” Miz looked sceptically at the android. “So how far is it to the end of the fjord?”

“Hugging the coast, approximately eighty-nine kilometres,” the android told them. “Though there are a couple of sizeable rivers to be forded.”

“Two days in and two back.” Dloan said.

“If I may say,” the android began. They looked at it. “I could perhaps get there and back in about twenty hours.” It looked round them, then made an almost bashful shrugging motion.

“So Feril could scout ahead,” Zefla said. “But what do we do when the rest of us get there?”

“If we find the Lazy Gun,” Sharrow said, “we just make a phone call. When the Franchise forces come in to investigate, we take whatever they arrive in; aircraft probably.”

“Just like that?” Zefla said.