The other man looked down, then nodded and started finger-tapping signals into his glove. The Archimandrite turned to the front again.

A distant thud sounded, followed a second later by another, then another, like a great clock ticking.

Luseferous listened to the two Ulubine Peregals, old men called Tlipeyn and Emoerte, trying to wheedle the Dwellers into being more cooperative. The Dwellers gave every indication of being sincerely unable even to understand what the word meant.

Out of the corner of his eye, minutely silhouetted against the filthy yellow-brown clouds of the planet beneath them, the Archimandrite could see a line of tiny specks drifting off to one side, heading towards the passing cloud tops thousands of kilometres below.

“…Believe us when we say that we are serious,” Commander Binstey, his C-in-C of ground forces was saying to the three Dwellers.

“Oh, I’m sure you are,” Chintsion said airily. “That does not alter the fact that we may be entirely unable to help you.”

Commander Binstey started to speak again but then Luseferous interrupted him. “Gentlemen,” he said quietly, and Binstey fell silent. “If I may direct your attention to the view over to one side there.” He waved one ringed hand over to the side where the stippled line of specks was moving slowly across the gasily distorted face of the planet.

Everybody looked. The Dwellers twisted slightly in their seats. Those present in the chamber with especially good eyesight were already reacting. He could hear mutters, gasps, all the usual expressions of shock.

“We are serious,” Luseferous told the Dwellers. He stood. “Do you hear that noise?” He turned his head, as though listening.

The dull ticking noise went on; steady, remorseless. “That is a drop-bomb chute, firing once a second. Only in this case it is firing people, not warheads. Unprotected human beings are being thrown into space towards your planet at a rate of over three thousand per hour. They are men, women and children, old and young adults, people from all walks of life, mostly captured from surrendered ships and damaged habitats. We have over twenty thousand of them aboard. They will continue to be fired at this rate until we make some sort of progress here.” He waited for some sort of reaction from the three Dwellers, but they just kept on looking at the view. “Now,” he continued, “do any of us here present think we might have just remembered anything useful?”

He watched the people and the aliens staring at the stippled line of black dots moving slowly away from the great ship. A few people turned to look at him, then looked away when he met their gaze, trying to hide hatred and fear and horror. Odd how people reacted so severely to something unpleasant happening right in front of them but were prepared to ignore much worse horrors taking place elsewhere.

He nodded to Tuhluer, and a great screen lit up across one side of the chamber, showing the process. People — humans of all sorts, as he’d said — were shown being loaded into a number of huge circular magazines. The humans were almost all struggling, but they were each constrained by a tight wrapping like an elastic sleeping bag which covered every bit of them except for their faces and prevented them from doing anything but squirm like maggots and spit at and try to bite the exoskel-wearing soldiers loading them into the launcher magazines. The floor of the vast hold was covered in wriggling, struggling bodies. The sound turned up, and those present in the conference chamber could hear the humans screaming and crying and shouting and begging.

“Archimandrite!” the Hierchon shouted. “I have to protest at this! I didn’t—”

“Shut up!” the Archimandrite bellowed at him. He looked round the others. “All of you! Not a fucking word!” For a while the only sound was the muffled thud, thud, thud of the launcher.

The scene switched to the muzzle of the launcher on the exterior of the ship, firing — very gently, for a gun — the people into space. Their wrapping came off as they were expelled, snapping back around their ankles so that they could writhe and jerk and spasm satisfactorily as they met the vacuum naked, and suffocated. Some tried to hold their breaths, and bulged fit to explode. Blood specked from ears and eyes and mouths and anuses. The cameras followed them. The people usually moved for about a couple of minutes before they stopped. Then they just assumed the one frozen pose — some curled foetal, some spreadeagled -and tumbled slowly, part of an invisible conveyor belt, towards the faraway cloud tops.

“Exactly why are you doing this?” the Dweller Feurish asked the Archimandrite. He sounded merely puzzled.

“To concentrate minds,” Luseferous said coldly. He could hear somebody being sick in the chamber. Not many people were meeting his gaze. The gantries above were thick with immobile guards, weapons already trained on the people below.

“Well, my mind was perfectly concentrated,” Feurish said, with what sounded like a sigh. “We still can’t help you.”

“Give me Seer Fassin Taak,” Luseferous said, feeling some sweat — what? — start to break out on his forehead. He put a stop to that at once.

“We haven’t got this Taak fellow,” the City Administrator Peripule said reasonably.

“Tell me where he is,” Luseferous demanded. “Sorry,” Chintsion said. “Can’t help.”

“Fucking tell me!” Luseferous roared.

“How can we—?” Feurish began. Then Chintsion broke in. “Perhaps we can ask the people who claim to have seen Seer Taak last where they think he might be.”

“There were people from the Embassy who were reported to be looking for him,” Feurish pointed out. “Perhaps they found something.”

“I thought they were all killed when the Embassy ships were destroyed,” Chintsion said. “Weren’t they?”

“Look,” Peripule said reasonably to the Archimandrite. “Why don’t we just sleep on it, eh?”

Luseferous pointed furiously at the line of bodies heading slowly towards the planet. “Don’t you fuckwits understand? That doesn’t stop until I get what I want!”

The three Dwellers twisted to look as one. “Hmm,” Peripule said thoughtfully. “I do hope you have enough people.”

Luseferous’s fists clenched. He felt close to exploding, as though he was one of the people in the little production line of death sliding past the bowed diamond window. He struggled to keep his voice icily calm as he said, “There are three hundred Dweller youngsters aboard this ship. Perhaps if we used them instead? Or for target practice. What do you think?”

“I think you’ll annoy people,” Chintsion said, and laughed.

“You’re not seriously trying to use threats against us, are you?” Feurish asked.

“I had better point out, Mr Luseferous,” Chintsion said with what sounded almost like humour, “that some of the clubs I represent are of a military bent. Wonderfully enthusiastic, of course, proud to personify them, naturally, but sometimes — I don’t know, perhaps through boredom — they display characteristics which might almost be said to be bordering on those one would expect to be evinced by fellows of a ‘shoot-first’ mentality. Ah. If you know what I mean.”

Luseferous stared at this cretinous float. The plodding, thud, thud, thud sound went on. The line of tiny dark shapes continued to move across the tortured, livid face of the gas-giant. He turned to Tuhluer. “Go to full action stations,” he said. “Dark the view.”

The vast face of Nasqueron disappeared as the diamond bubble went obsidian black. The whole great chamber grew still darker and seemed to shrink. The thudding noise sounded louder.

“You three are to be held hostage,” Luseferous told the three Dwellers. “As will the young of your kind currently aboard this ship. If there is any attempt to rescue you or them, or any assault on this ship or on any of my ships or assets, you will all be killed. If I don’t get something provably useful on Seer Fassin Taak or whatever it was he was looking for in the next six hours standard, I’m going to start killing you anyway, starting with you three. Understand?”