The Voehn commander was sitting where and how he had been, unruffled. “That was not cooperating fully,” he said, voice soft.

“Urgh,” Y’sul said thickly. His carapace held two dents, one on each discus rim. There was another large, broken-looking bruise on his inner hub. That was serious damage for a Dweller, the equivalent of a broken limb or two and perhaps a compressed skull fracture for a human. Fassin hadn’t even seen quite how the Voehn commander had hit Y’sul. He’d have gone back for a replay but the little gascraft’s systems seemed to have been zapped and they weren’t providing any recording ability. Oh fuck, he thought. We’re all going to die and the only one they can torture properly is me. He saw himself peeled, prised out of the gascraft like a snail from its shell.

Y’sul drew himself very slowly upright again, shaking slightly. He was mumbling something unintelligible.

Quercer Janath turned very slowly, looked at the Dweller and then turned back to the commander. “With your permission, sir?”

“What?” the Voehn asked. “Like to aid our fellow.”

“Go ahead.”

The travelcaptain let the prison-wrap fall to the floor, then moved over to Y’sul and guided the injured Dweller back to his dent-seat. Y’sul continued to talk; nonsense somewhere beneath the level of clear comprehension.

With a noise like a sigh, the truetwin settled into its own housing, sparing one more look for Y’sul, still trembling and mumbling to himself.

“We are not here to play games, we are here to discover truth,” the Voehn commander told them. “The complete truth may save you. Anything else will surely be your ruin. The Protreptic is a Lustral Order special forces ship, generally charged with the hunting down and extermination of anathematics, that is, the obscenities commonly called AIs. We have unbounded authority on this mission as on all our missions. You are entirely within our control and will cooperate without question or reserve, or will suffer accordingly. I hereby deem you to have understood fully everything I have told you thus far.”

“Ah, well,” Quercer Janath said. The truetwin sounded mildly peeved, as though it hadn’t been listening to the commander at all and had just heard something moderately discomfiting over an internal radio link.

The instrument one of the guards had pointed at the three prisoners, now slung on a strap across his back, glowed through red to yellow and spat tiny sparks. The soldier moved almost as quickly as the commander, turning and twisting and pulling the device off his back to throw it to the floor. It skidded and thudded against the curve of the wall, smoking.

The commander looked at it for a moment, then turned calmly back to look at the prisoners again. “Neat trick,” he said, sounding amused. “Who’s the show-off?” He looked at Fassin. The two guards had levelled their guns at them, one pointing directly at Fassin, the other between Y’sul and the truetwin.

“Ah, guilty, commander,” said Quercer Janath breezily. “But, heck, that’s nothing.”

“Watch this.”

The dim grey glow that came from every surface suddenly brightened wildly, leaving them all — the two Dwellers, the three Voehn and Fassin himself — seeming to float in the midst of an insanely bright flare of nova-bright light. It was as though they’d all been instantly dropped into the surface of a sun. Fassin heard himself yelp and felt automatics in the gascraft’s senses snap their burn-out defences down.

Very heavy again, and very suddenly.

Fassin could see the light, he could swear. It was coming through the hull of the gascraft, hitting his closed, human eyes.

Three great thumps sounded, shaking the air, echoing round the chamber. Somewhere in the middle of this he opened his visuals enough to see them all hanging, black blobs in light, and tiny bright crimson lines of still greater brilliance joining the Voehn to Quercer Janath. Stupidly, for a moment he waited to see the travelcaptain explode or get thrown back, but the great circular shape roted back barely at all; it was the Voehn who were getting thrown all over the place.

Sudden silence, sudden darkness. Blind again. Fassin let the gascraft open up the equivalent of one eye until it was at normal exposure. There had been some damage but he could still see. There was a surprising amount of infrared radiation. He looked at where it was coming from. It was coming from the Voehn. They glowed. One of the guards lay spread, opened, against the curved wall by the doorway. The other was face down, two forelimbs blown off, halfway between the door and the place where the commander had been. The commander was making his way, jerkily, towards the tall figure of Quercer Janath. The commander’s head had been half blown off, a side of skull hanging, twitching as he walked, held on only by connective tissue. He raised his arms and took a few more awkward steps towards the travelcaptain, then collapsed to the floor, loosening completely, like something thawing.

“Not fooling anyone,” a voice that might have been Quercer Janath’s said. The restraints slid up around Fassin and the still-shaking Y’sul. “Hey-hey,” the travelcaptain said.

The apparent gravity went crazy, shifting in an instant from one vector to another, ahead to astern in an instant. This had the effect of batting the Voehn commander from the floor to the ceiling and back again half a dozen times or so. Then he blurred into action. A half-headless grey whirlwind darted towards Quercer Janath, almost quicker than the eye could follow.

In an instant, all movement ceased.

A tableau: the Voehn commander was held by the neck, struggling weakly, in the grip of one of Quercer Janath’s outstretched hub-arms.

“Oh, how ever did we let it come to this?” the truetwin said, positively sultry. It snapped the commander’s neck, then two thin blue beams cut through the gaseous atmosphere from near the travelcaptain’s outer discus fringes, dicing the struggling, flicking, spasming body of the commander until there was almost nothing left to hold. The truetwin let the remains drop to the floor. There was, Fassin noted, a grisly kind of wetness involved in this action.

“This is the ship’s autonomous loyalty system!” shouted a voice from the gas. “Integrity infraction! Integrity infraction! Self-destruct in—”

“Oh,” said Quercer Janath, sounding tired, “really.”

The voice from nowhere came back. “This is the ship’s autonomou—”

Silence.

“And… so much for that.”

“The fu’s goin on?” Y’sul mumbled.

“Ditto that,” Fassin said.

“Ah, good,” Quercer Janath said. “Still with us.”

“A relief.”

“Yeah, it’s ours,” one half said cheerfully.

The restraints slid back into the floor again.

“Ah, where to start?”

“The Voehn will be annoyed.”

“The Mercatoria will be annoyed.”

“Not our fault.”

“Didn’t start it.”

Quercer Janath moved away from the dent-seat, over the body parts of the Voehn commander and the two guards, flicking the soldiers’ weapons away from their bodies as it went. The truetwin hovered by the door.

“Seriously,” Fassin said. “What is happening?” He looked at what was left of the three Voehn who’d been in the chamber with them. “How did you do that?”

Quercer Janath were still studying the doorway, which remained closed. “We are not a Dweller,” the travelcaptain said, not turning back to look at Fassin. One of its limbs went out and prodded at the wall around where the door ought to be.

“Purely mechanical. Very annoying.”

“Mr Taak, would you look after Mr Y’sul? Please?”

Fassin floated out of his dent-seat, towards Y’sul. He put his right manipulator out.

“Kin look after self,” Y’sul said, trying to shrug Fassin’s arm off. He sighed.

“So what are you?” Fassin asked.

“An AI, Mr Taak,” the creature said, still tapping round the door, not obviously looking back at him.