Back at the nest, turmoil. The place had been raided, trashed, everything in it broken or sprayed with stinking, vomit-inducing crowd-control goo. They went to a bar instead and didn’t really talk about anything after the protest and the crackdown. They talked instead of rumours of people being killed and others disappearing.

K wasn’t there. She’d been beaten up when the troopers came to turn the nest over. She was in a prison hospital ship for three weeks, then killed herself with a broken glass the day she was released.

It was months before Fassin learned the truth. K had been sent into a nightmare tream. Somebody who’d come with the law officers — maybe just one of them who happened to know how to handle tream gear — had found her still floating, not yet out of the delving tream, and altered the settings on the traumalyser and the subsal while some others had held her down and worked her over. Whoever did the thing with the traumalyser must have carried that sort of template chip around with them, just for such eventualities. Then they’d left her, bloody and bound, to some speeded-up nightmare of horror, rape and torture.

They were all split up, doing other, mostly more responsible things when they pieced all this together. They talked about a complaint, an investigation, a protest.

Fassin went back to ’glantine and booked a place on the Seer induction course for the term after next. Then he returned to the habs, and then to Sepekte’s Boogeytown, to the roaring life, the drink and drugs and fucking and fun, and — after a while, gradually, carefully — made a few inquiries, hung out in the right places, and met certain people. Apparently he passed a few tests without realising he’d been taking them, and then one night he was introduced to a girl who called herself Aun Liss.

* * *

“Fassin!”

His name jolted him awake. Third Fury; cabin. Still night-dark. Clanging noise. The screen showed hour Four. The screen was red and flashing. Had somebody spoken?

“What?” he said, tearing the restraints away and levering himself out of bed, floating towards the centre of the cabin.

“Herv Apsile,” said a voice. Sounded like Apsile. Sounded like Apsile in a state of some excitement or distress. “We have a situation. Looks like an attack.”

Oh, shit. Fassin pulled on clothes, called up full lights. “That fucking horrendous clanging noise the alarm?”

“That’s right.”

“You in Facility Command?”

“Yes.”

“Who do we think?” A light flashed over a storage locker and it revolved, revealing an emergency esuit.

“Don’t know. Two naval units vaporised already. Get suited and—”

The lights — all the lights — flickered. The screen did not come back on. A tremor made the cabin shake. Something broke in the bathroom with a sharp crack.

“You feel that? You still there?” Apsile said.

“Yes to both,” Fassin said. He was looking at the esuit.

“Suit up and take a drop shaft to the emergency shelter.” Apsile paused. “You got that?” Another pause. “Fass?”

“Here.” Fassin started pulling all his clothes off again. “That what you’re going to do, Herv?”

“That’s what we’re both supposed to do.”

Another tremble made the whole cabin rattle. The air seemed to quake like jelly.

The alarm shut off. Somehow, though, not in an encouraging way.

The screen flashed once, screeched.

Fassin hauled the esuit out of its locker. “How’s the main hangar?” he asked.

“Intact. Whatever’s hitting us seems to be coming in from the Nasq spin-side, slightly retro.”

“So heading into the centre’s going to be putting us closer,” Fassin said. Was that a draught? He could hear a hissing sound. He clipped the esuit collar round his neck and let the gel helmet deploy. It turned everything hazy and quiet for a moment, then decided the situation wasn’t too dire yet, and opened slits for him to breathe, talk and hear through. The face-mask section thinned to near-perfect transparency.

“For now,” Apsile agreed. “If the direction of the hostile fire stays constant we’ll be coming round to face it full on in two hours.”

Fassin stepped into the esuit and pulled it up, letting it connect with the collar, adjusting to his body, huffing and settling. Very comfortable, really. “That what you want to do, Herv? Sit in a huddle with everybody else like mice in a hole hoping the cat goes away?”

“Standing orders.”

“I know. Want to guess what I want to do?” There was a pause. Another more violent tremor shook the cabin. The main door popped open, wobbling inwards, revealing the companionway outside. The pause went on. “Herv?” he asked. He looked round for anything he might want to take with him. Nothing. “Herv?”

“I’ll see you there.”

Something blazed hard and blue-white against Nasqueron’s side-lit face, turning the hangar into a harsh jagged jumble of fiercely shining surfaces and intensely black shadows. Fassin flinched. The light faded quickly, turning to yellow and orange; a small fading sun shone between the moon and Nasqueron.

Herv Apsile had got there ahead of him. He gave a quick wave and easily jumped the eight metres to the open nose-blister of the carrier craft, disappearing inside. The nose-blister closed.

“Herv?” Fassin said, trying the suit’s emergency comms. No answer. He made slow bounds for the open hold. Colonel Hatherence was already there, the tall discus of her esuit floating a fraction above the floor directly beneath the place she’d filled earlier.

“Seer Taak! I rather thought you might adopt this course!” she shouted.

Shit, Fassin thought. He’d kind of hoped the colonel would have made her way to the emergency shelter in the moon’s core, ten kilometres down, along with everybody else, like they’d all been told to. There was one drop shaft big enough, wasn’t there? Oh well. He came to a stop beneath the little arrowhead gascraft hanging in its cradle directly above. “Colonel,” he said, nodding.

Would she try to stop him? No idea. Could she? No doubt about that.

“Not sure whether to be relieved or terrified,” the colonel yelled. A manipulator arm creased out from the side of the oerileithe esuit, unfolding towards Fassin. Oh, fuck, he thought. Here we go.

“After you!” the colonel said, her arm indicating the space above.

Fassin smiled and jumped. She rose with a whirr beside him. Stopped and then braced by the ceiling of the hold, he flipped open the cockpit of the little gascraft, revealing a vaguely coffin-shaped space. He shucked the suit and unclipped the helmet.

“Out of uniform, major,” the colonel said jovially, voice echoing in the enclosed space of the upper hold. Fassin let the suit fall slowly to the floor beneath and stepped into the foot of the little arrowhead’s cockpit. “Gracious!” Hatherence said. “Are all human males of this form?”

“Just the handsome ones, colonel,” he assured her. He lowered himself carefully into the cool gel. The cockpit cover closed over him. He wriggled in the darkness, getting his neck positioned over the scanner collar. A soft light and a gentle chime confirmed all was well. He reached for the double nozzle of the gillfluid root, took a deep breath, let it out, then placed the nozzles at his nostrils.

Fassin lay back, zoning out as best he could, fighting the urge to panic, the gag response of fear as the gillfluid poured into his nose, throat and lungs like the coldest drink anybody had ever taken.

A moment of confusion, disorientation. Then the collar nestling closer against his neck and the warming gel closing over his body, tendrils seeking out ears, mouth, penis and anus. Twin stings of pain on his forearms, then another pair, one under each ear, as the blood slides went in.

“Set?” said the voice of Herv Apsile, gurgling through the still calibrating gel in his ears.