Bashs eyes were large and brown and quite as beautiful as she remembered them. When she had first met him, she had been struck by his size two metres of muscular mass accompanied by the sweetest personality imaginable. Now, much of that muscle was gone, leaving him so emaciated that Megan found herself wondering when he had last been fed.

His breathing faltered, and caught. His eyes seemed to focus on her for one brief moment.

Megan felt her own breath catch in her throat. He knows Im here. He must do. He . . .

But then his eyes lost focus again, and once more he stared off into some unknowable vista.

She shakily exhaled, realizing it was foolish of her to have expected anything else. The Bash she knew was gone, and now all that was left was this sad, sorry shell of a man.

She stroked his scalp again, feeling for the ridges and crenellations beneath the skin that identified him as a fellow machine-head. Without him she could not reawaken the link that Tarrant had once forged between Bash and the alien entity known to some species as the Wanderer but to others as the Marauder.

Megan rocked back on her heels, pressing her hands against her eyes. A long time ago, when she was much younger, she had convinced herself she was in love with Bash. When she told him so, he had laughed and informed her, not unkindly, that she wasnt his type. When she asked what his type was, he had glanced across the bar they were sitting in, towards a cluster of male Alliance officers gathered around a nearby table.

At first she had been crushed, but she soon understood that what she had mistaken for romantic love was instead something deeper and more lasting. It was a bond like that between brother and sister, or father and daughter: a bond that had first formed on the day of her sudden and unexpected rescue.

In a very real sense, she owed him her life.

It was easy for her to imagine what he might say now, were he capable of saying anything at all. She could picture his easy sardonic smile, hear the warm full tones of his voice.

Remember the first time we met? she whispered.

His unspoken reply echoed in her ears. Sure I do, Megan. It was on Redstone. I remember it as if it were yesterday.

I was so scared that night. She remembered how she had fled through crowded city streets, desperate to escape a terrible fate.

The first time I saw you, she remembered him once saying, you looked so cold I wanted to wrap you up like a baby.

You were the only one I could trust. The only one I could tell the truth to.

Your secret was always safe with me, honey. You know that.