~ I take it you’ve been listening. Want to contact the GSV?

~ I was listening. I have already contacted the Sleeper Service. Mr Genar-Hofoen and the avatar Amorphia are aboard and on their way here.

~ Fast work, Ulver told it, and continued to gently comb Dajeil’s hair. ‘They’re on their way,’ she told her. ‘Byr and the avatar.’

Dajeil said nothing.

A couple of decks further down in the accommodation section, Amorphia turned to Genar-Hofoen as they walked down a corridor. ‘And it might be best not to mention that we were Displaced aboard at the same time as Ulver,’ it told the man.

‘I’ll try not to let it slip,’ he said sourly. ‘Let’s just get this over with, shall we?’

‘Definitely the right attitude,’ muttered the avatar, stepping into a lift. They ascended to the impersonation of the tower.

XV

XV

Snug, encapsulated in a cobbled-together nest-capsule deep inside the accommodation section of the ex-Culture ship Heavy Messing, Captain Greydawn Latesetting X of the Farsight tribe watched the blip which represented the crippled hulk of the Attitude Adjuster fall astern on the holo display, the screams of his uncle Risingmoon and the other Affronters on the stricken vessel still ringing in his mind. A hazy cloud hung around the blip of the tumbling wreck, indicating where the ship’s sensors estimated the Culture warship - which the Heavy Messing still thought was a Deluger vessel - now was.

With his uncle dead, the fleet was now under Greydawn’s command. The urge to swing the whole assemblage about and bear down on the single Culture ship was almost irresistible. But there would be no point; it was faster than any of their craft; the Heavy Messing’s Mind thought that the Culture ship might have damaged its engines during its run-in to the attack, but even so it could probably still outstrip any of the ships in the fleet, and so all such a course would accomplish would be to draw them away from their intended destination, without even the realistic prospect of revenge. They had to continue. Greydawn signalled to the six other craft which were crewed.

~ Fellow warriors. No one feels the loss of our comrades more than I. However, our mission remains the same. Let our victory be our first revenge. The power we gain for our kind as a result of it will purchase the ability to punish all such crimes against us a million-fold!

~ The attacker’s duplication of a Culture vessel’s emission signature spectrum and field was astonishingly authentic, the Heavy Messing wrote on one of the screens in front of Greydawn.

~ Their abilities have grown while you were asleep, ally, Greydawn told the ship. He felt his gas sac tense and contract as he spoke-wrote the words, ever conscious that anything he said might help give away the huge trick being played on the Culture ships. ~ You see the severity of the threat they now present.