Campion seems to clock Salvo as an Artificial right away and focuses on Fin. He does the same to her. She’s small, maybe five-four, five-five, but seems to have a strong frame, brown hair all tucked back, brown eyes like her photo; but enlivened, she is filled with anxiety-fuelled intensity. Fin wonders what she sees when she looks at him. Brown-skinned colonial?

“So, you guys are cops,” Campion says.

“I’m a contractor,” says Fin.

“And I belong to him,” says Salvo, deadpan.

“No, he doesn’t. But he works with me,” says Fin.

“Okay. Have you done this before?” A note is creeping into her voice that Fin does not care for.

“Many times,” says Fin. “On Bloodroot. With aliens.”

“Let me get this straight. You have never investigated a killing on board a large spacecraft?”

“Any spacecraft, really. But don’t worry. The principle is the same, except all your culprits are locked in here. With murder, some things never change: means, motive, opportunity.” Fin shifts his weight as best as he can manage. “Tell us what happened. In your own words.”

Shell looks from Fin to Salvo and back.

“The master AI failed…”

Chapter Four

Ragtime: Shell

Ten Days Earlier…

“Campion, wake up. Wake up, Campion.”

A cool mist, sprayed on her eyelids to dissolve the rheum. She does not know where she is, but the panic in her mind cannot translate to motion because she is without sensation, and paralysed.

Not totally, though. After the eye gunk is moisturised, Shell finds she can move her eyelids.

“Campion, open your eyes.”

The hell is this repetitive voice?

She opens her eyes.

An image of a kindly older woman, blonde, familiar, larger than life, winking at her, filling Shell’s entire visual field.

Feeling returns. Her mouth is dry and holds a metallic taste, with soreness down the throat when she tries to swallow. She feels tubes going into both arms and one into her bladder. She begins to remember.

I’m in space.

The giant face is her mother’s, as is the voice prompting her – choices that Shell made for her emergence from sleep.

I’m on the Ragtime.

“Where are my worry beads?” she says, but not really because she can’t move her mouth yet.

Her mother’s projected face disappears, replaced by a display of her most recent blood results, then her blood gases.

“Captain, I’m awake,” says Campion. She remembers more. She is first mate, and this is her first long-haul. The Captain does not respond. She remembers he likes to be called Ragtime.

“Ragtime, I’m awake.”

There are bands around her limbs, myostimulators to maintain muscle tone during interstellar travel. Weight simulators would have been applied by the maintenance bots to stave off osteoporosis, physiotherapy to maintain nimbleness, and some kind of moisturising routine for the skin.