— Thoroughly, he sent back just by thinking. — And the colonel?

“I am set, also!” Even over comms, it seemed, Colonel Hatherence tended to shout.

Fassin had been wondering if they could leave her behind somehow. Probably not, then.

“Hold doors closing. Ready to go,” Apsile said.

Fassin started to become his little gascraft. It covered him, embraced him, multiply penetrated him, and in those acts offered itself up to him completely. The light from below disappeared as the hold doors closed. He could see Colonel Hatherence’s esuit hanging beside him, sense its cold and read its electromagnetic signature, just as he could feel the systems of the drop ship readying, flexing, preparing, changing as the ship nudged itself off the floor. Other senses registered an unusual wash of radiations, a faint gravity well set in a much greater, deeper one, a slather of meaningless comms shards, confused transmissions and EM signals from the Shared Facility base itself — and a sudden jolt, a transmitted faint but massive thud followed by a strange sideways, upwards-sucking movement.

He waited for Apsile to talk to them, meanwhile trying to work it out himself. Distant whirr and hiss of the carrier tanking the air in its hold.

“Sorry about that,” Apsile said mildly. “Back in control. Unconventional method of opening the hangar to vacuum there. No idea who to thank.”

— We okay? Fassin asked.

“NSD,” Apsile said, sounding mildly distracted. “No Significant Damage.”

— Let you get on with it, Fassin sent.

“Thanks.”

“Cancel relief, emphasise terror,” the colonel said.

Fassin hoped she was talking only to him. He checked through all the little gascraft’s settings and systems, settling into it as its life-support tendrils settled into him. Something like a wide array of lights seen from the bottom corner of the eye swung into focus in front of him. He called up a few read-outs and started a couple of subroutines to check that everything was working. Seemed to be.

He felt the carrier accelerate away from the moon. Patch-through to the larger ship’s senses suddenly appeared as an option on his controls and he took it.

Now he could experience pretty much what Apsile could.

Nasqueron filling the sky ahead and up, the grey-brown surface of Third Fury disappearing fast below and behind. Debris clouds. Comms shards. More than there ought to be in a properly organised fleetlet like the one that had brought them here and that had been guarding the moon. No sign of illuminating radar or other targeting give-away. Not that a civilian ship like the carrier would be able to spot any but the most glaringly obvious. No current damage flags, just records of a few small hull impacts, little more than pitting. Ship drive traces.

A sudden flare of radiation as a ship turned hard a couple of hundred klicks away, dying away. Outgoing signal loop, broadcasting their unarmed condition, claiming lifeboat status. Flash! From right behind. A near-semicircular debris cloud rising glittering from a new glowing crater maybe half a klick across on the surface of Third Fury. Three smaller craters coming into view, recent but cooled down to orange and red heat. The view twisted, overlays of lines and grids and drive symbols flickering into being.

Apsile pointed the carrier’s nose straight at Nasqueron and started a long, purposefully irregular corkscrew towards the gas-giant, accelerating the drop ship as hard as its engines would allow.

The drop ship was no sort of high-performance military unit; all it was supposed to do was take the gascraft from the Facility to the gas-giant and pick them up later. It was rugged, able to take the strain of operating inside Nasqueron’s gravity well and its various pressure environments down to the liquid-hydrogen level, and it had the power to lift itself and its charges easily enough out of Nasqueron’s grip. But it was not especially manoeuvrable, carried no armament or defensive systems and far from being stealthed had been designed from its invitation-to-tender spec, onwards to be as easy to see with as many different senses as it was possible to imagine, just so that no mischievous Dweller could crash something into it and then claim, sorry, they hadn’t seen it.

“How you doing down there?” Apsile asked. He sounded in control, unworried.

“Fine, for myself,” the colonel said.

— Ditto, Fassin sent. — Got an ETA yet?

Trips from Third Fury to Nasq. usually took about an hour. Fassin hoped they could do it in less than half that.

“With the main drive maxed we should make turnaround in about ten minutes,” Apsile said, “then decelerate for another ten and then take… hmm, another handful — five at most, I’d hope — to get deep enough into the atmosphere.”

He meant deep enough into the atmosphere to be beyond any but the most scary weapons. Obviously not counting the scary weapons the Dwellers possessed.

— Anything we can clip off that? Fassin asked.

“Maybe we could make it down in less time once we hit the cloud tops,” Apsile said. “Steeper, carrying more speed. Maybe. Hmm.” Fassin got the impression somehow that the man was rubbing his chin. “Yes, maybe, if we let the heat and stress levels creep just a tad beyond tolerance.” A pause. “Though of course that’s always assuming that the ship didn’t take any damage we don’t know about when the hangar dome got blown.”

— Always assuming, Fassin agreed.

“Master Technician,” Colonel Hatherence said, “are we being pursued or under unit-specific attack?”

“No, colonel.”

“Then I suggest we adopt your first entry profile.”

— Decision’s yours alone, Herv, Fassin sent.

“Copy.”

“Can you access any military comms traffic, Master Technician?”

“I’m afraid not, ma’am, not unless they choose to target us with a clear beam or broadcast.”

“That is unfortunate. What seems to be happening?”

“Looks like there’s been some sort of firefight. Still going on, possibly. Drives spreading away from the moon, heading in the direction the hostile munitions appeared to be coming from. Woh!”

The flash attracted Fassin’s second-hand attention as well; another, even larger crater glowing white on the surface of Third Fury.

“What of the people still back within the Third Fury moonlet?” the colonel asked.

“Been listening,” Apsile said. “I’ll try and contact them direct. Give me a moment.”

Silence. Fassin watched space wheel around them through the carrier ship’s sensors. He checked the drop ship’s system profile, oriented, then searched for and found ’glantine; a tiny shining dot, far away. The sensors let him zoom in until the planet moon was a shining gibbous image, scintillating with magnification artefacts, hints of its topography just about visible. Could that be the uplands? There, that light patch — the Sea of Fines? A spark. There, back up… A tiny flash? Had he seen that?

Something colder and more invasive than any gel tendril seemed to invade him, clutching at his stomach and heart. No, surely not. Just another artefact of the system. He looked for the sensor-replay controls.

“Shit, there’s a fucking wreckage—” Apsile said, then the craft bucked and swung. Fassin, turning his focus of attention back to what Apsile was looking at saw it too now: a field of dark specks across the face of the planet ahead of them like a ragged flock of birds far in the distance. They were at near-maximum velocity. The carrier started to turn.

A rush of dark scraps, tearing by on all sides like a thin shell of soot-black snow flakes. Fassin felt his arms, held by the cloying shock-gel, attempt to draw themselves in towards his body, instinctively trying to make himself a smaller target. Then they were through. No impacts.

After a moment, Fassin felt the drop ship start to swing round to present its drive tubes towards the planet, ready to begin deceleration. “I think,” Apsile said cautiously, “that we just about got away with—”