Brisbane has lost feeling in his entire right arm. It’s like there’s nothing there and he is constantly surprised when he looks in that direction. He can still move it, though. The suit grew microfibres that burrowed through the arm and linked with each other. The arm obeys commands in a way Brisbane does not fully understand. The mechanics have nothing to do with muscles, tendons, and ligaments and more to do with the suit’s exoskeleton function.

Gas builds up and gurgles in the corpse.

Is he afraid of dying? It depends. He realises that the people he cares about in Tehani are dead. His other family is probably still alive, but he has no strong feelings about missing them. His father will be fine. His mother is unpredictable. Siblings care, but in a desultory way. His brother is probably still fucking his way across the Global North. He has no lover and is going to die alone, or with a psychotic AI giving a running commentary shot through with veiled jibes at his inherent inferiority.

Brisbane examines feeds from on-board cameras. The wolf turns up again. Without its master, it seems to be feral. Maybe that’s what happens to AIA that lose regular contact with HQ: they become more and more savage.

It can’t be serious about wanting him to eat flesh. But if he doesn’t, Carmilla will know. So he strips the man of any remaining clothing. Carmilla cannot see him here since there are no cameras. But she can be aware of his motion, his proprioception.

“I need a cutting tool, Carmilla.”

One of the bots scampers over and detaches a sawtoothed implement from itself. Brisbane takes a deep breath and cuts into the man’s thigh, takes chunks out of the quadriceps. He cuts them into bits, like he’s eating. He chomps his jaw. He does have bottles of potable water, which he uses to simulate swallowing meat.

“We need to plan,” says Carmilla. It is as if she has been waiting for him to eat. “Our aim is to get you on the ground. We can’t do that with this ship. At best, it can dock at a space station. We need shuttles from the planet.”

“But they won’t evacuate the ship until quarantine is lifted. The investigation needs to have ended.”

“If we create an emergency, they’ll have to evacuate for safety reasons.”

“What kind of emergency? Open an airlock?”

“No, they’ll just close them manually. The airlocks can never be opened electronically. Each lock has twelve manual locks for added safety. I’ve been trawling the data. This ship wasn’t built on Earth. It was built in space, module by module. We’re sitting in one of the oldest parts of the ship, at one end of the truss. Aft.”

“You want us to open this to space?”

“I want to detach the node, exposing the corridor to space, yes.”