A bubble of utter darkness bloomed inside the dome, necklaced with flickering strands of rainbow colours. It consumed the doors, swallowed up the ground in front of them. Then, with a pop of inrushing air, it burst.

A gust of hot, dry wind blew over the white-hot edges of the severed airlock. One of the battlesuits reacted faster than the other: that one survived. Its companion was speared by a violet beam of light that shone down the tunnel and crackled with energy.

Ariadne, flying so close to the ground outside that she made the sand dance, gave the pulse everything she had. She burned through the outer armour, heated the body inside until it turned to plasma, then punched out the back plate in an incandescent wave of gas. The armour ballooned outward until it abruptly transformed into a shockwave of vapour. Burned shards of carbon and metal pattered down all around the pair of leg stumps.

The laser cut through the far side of the unshielded dome and fused a sand dune into glass, then the hellish light blinked off.

One on one. Neither had any weapons left: it was down to brute force. The remaining battlesuit caught Benzamir around the waist and started to squeeze. They staggered, locked together in a drunkard’s walk. They fell into the lowest floor of the habs, destroying them, spewing gouts of masonry and fragments of supporting beams.

Benzamir realized he had both arms free. He felt for his opponent’s head, wrenched it off with a tortured shriek, but still it crushed him.

‘Warning. Structural failure.’

In a moment of blinding clarity, he extended a hand spike and rammed it down through the neck. The iron grip around him slackened. The other man had to know what he was doing. He kept pushing, probing and hoping.

He was shoved away, tottering back, unable to turn at the waist. The other suit, blind, started to deploy an emergency camera to work out where it was, where anybody was. The hab block was beginning to collapse around them.

Benzamir edged forward. The camera, an aerial with a fish-eye lens, spotted him, and the battlesuit kicked out at him, catching him on an already damaged leg and sending him spinning over.

He didn’t have the strength to rise. He could have died then, had his enemy pressed their advantage. But he hesitated, suspecting a trick, waiting to see if Benzamir would truly stay down.

Alessandra threw a fist-sized sphere behind the battlesuit. It heard the noise, turned, and was momentarily distracted by a woman in Arab dress calmly inspecting her pulse rifle to see where her finger needed to go and firing three plasma rounds into its chest.

The bomb expanded into a thing of terrible beauty. It caught the battlesuit up past its waist, with one arm held fast. With its free hand the suit frantically struck at the space-time surface, desperately trying to break out. Dark light grew around the bubble’s circumference. Then it disappeared, dragging loose dust into the vacuum.

The chest fell with one whole arm and part of the other. Blood gushed out into the glassy bowl beneath and splashed almost to the rim. Alessandra glanced down at what she’d done with a look of distaste, then beckoned hidden others.

Benzamir crawled out, chunks of debris crashing on and around him. He tried to stand. Nothing would work. His field of view grew to encompass Said, Wahir and Elenya, all holding rifles. They were aiming, more or less accurately, up at the crumbling habs.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he said, then looked behind him. There were several gun barrels pointing down at them. The eyes of those behind them looked both beaten and savage at the same time.

He had to get up, put his body between them. He used his arms as leverage and opened his ruined radiator wings, but everything was broken. He was losing life-support.

‘Benzamir?’ Alessandra’s knuckles whitened around the trigger. ‘What’s wrong?’

He was blacking out, and with his failing thoughts he activated the exit sequence. What was once an extension of his body became a rigid cast. The view of outside dimmed, and the liquid started to drain from the chamber. Face down, it emptied as far as his ears, then stopped.

‘Mechanical malfunction. Aborting exit sequence. Emergency override.’

The back panel blew out, spraying those around him with viscous pink slime. The neck shunts snapped off, leaving two fat tubes stuck in his arteries. Blood started to shoot from the open ends before they clamped shut.

All this time, Benzamir was suffocating. He tried to pull his head out, free his arms. He was stuck. Something had warped inside. He heaved the first spout of liquid from his lungs, but still couldn’t breathe.

He heard Arabic, couldn’t work out what was being said, then World, and again missed its meaning. He was drowning, choking and vomiting and it really did feel like he was going to die.

Arms looped around his shoulders and pulled. More laced under his sternum and jerked him upwards.

His lungs emptied in one huge bubbling splatter. Then again as his chest was squeezed clear.

His body moved, slid out of the confines of the suit. Grit hissed against his knees and he put his face down into a pool of something warm. He felt a comforting hand press gently on his back, and he decided that he ought to try and breathe again.

His first attempt seemed to last for ever, and when he eventually stopped, he coughed it all out again, spilling more slimy liquid uncontrollably onto the dusty ground.

‘It’s all right.’ Alessandra held his shoulders. ‘Again.’

He sucked in air. It was too sharp; it hurt going in, it hurt coming out, and it did no good while it was there.

‘Again,’ she insisted.

Better. The urge to sleep, just to lie down and stop everything, started to go. He coughed again, pink phlegm staining the floor.

He tried to speak, and it sounded like he was gargling with razorblades. He spat out what was in his mouth.

‘I’m bleeding.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m bleeding from somewhere. This stuff should be clear.’ He rolled over, and for some reason found himself in her lap, his head in the crook of her elbow.

‘You’ve blood coming from your ears and nose, and your eyes are almost all red. Is this normal or should I worry?’

‘Normal enough. Get me upright.’

Said, his gun abandoned, pulled Benzamir up. His knees buckled, and the big man caught him.

‘Master?’

Benzamir could hardly see. His eyes were damaged, full of debris and barely responsive. ‘Pressure damage. I’ll heal. So why haven’t we been cut down like vermin? What’s holding them back?’

Alessandra scanned the balconies. ‘All they’re doing is watching us. Some of them aren’t even pointing their – you know – bang-sticks at us.’

‘That sounds promising.’ He called out in as big a voice as he could muster. ‘You can’t win. You know it. Ariadne will wait for you for ever if need be. Put yourself under my protection and you won’t be harmed.’ Then to Alessandra: ‘What are they doing now?’

‘That was pitiful. I don’t think they even heard you.’

A figure in black walked in front of them, picking his way nimbly over the rubble. He looked up at the hab, then down at Benzamir. He shook his head sadly.

‘I told you so. And now, look at what you’ve done. There’s been too many deaths, too much destruction. It’s not the books themselves. It’s the lust for what lies inside that leads people to madness. Even you, Mahgrebi.’

‘You were going to march in here and just demand them back, Va? That’s madness.’

‘We’ll see. I understand that the longer I talk, the more your rebels are likely to understand me. Very well, then. We will talk, and they will listen. Maghrebi, I never once asked for your help. Your way of doing things is not mine. You rely on your wit and your power. I have nothing but faith to call on.’ He smiled, and the effect was so startling that Benzamir gasped. ‘But you have friends, and that counts for a great deal. So, I ask you now, tell your friends to put their weapons down. There has to be an end to all this, and you’ll not achieve it your way.’