‘Ah, yes,’ said the Captain. ‘Mother and grandmother of battles. Battles that breed more battles.’ ‘And this is your leader speaking,’ sneered the Gunnery Officer. ‘The leader of the fleet. It is pathetic. Cowardly.’

‘When we are home—’ the Captain began.

‘Home? This is our home! We have no other! All this talk of the Border, and a planet of our own . . . Have any of us seen it? No! It’s a legend. Wishful thinking. A dream. We lie to ourselves. We make up stories. The Chosen One. The Hero with a Thousand Extra Lives! It’s all dreams! We live and breed and die on our ships. That is our destiny. There is no choice!’

Chapter 8

Peace Talks, Peace Shouts

Johnny awoke in the starship.

Normally he was some way from the fleet, but this time it was around him. There were ScreeWee ships on every side.

They were flying the wrong way.

Immediately, a face appeared on the screen. Except for a few differences on the crest, and a slight orange tint to the scales, it might have been the Captain.

‘Calling the human ship.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I am the new Captain. These are my instructions—’

‘What happened to the old Captain?’

‘She is under arrest. These are my instructions—’

‘Arrest? What for? What did she do?’

‘She did nothing. Listen to me. You have sixty seconds to get beyond range of our guns. For honour. After that, you will be fired upon with extreme force.’

‘Hang on—’

‘The count has started.’

‘But—’

‘End of communication. Die, human.’

The screen went blank.

Johnny stared at it.

It hadn’t been a friendly face. The voice had sounded as though it had learned Human out of a book, just like the real Captain. But in this case it had been a nasty book. It also sounded as though it belonged to someone who would count to sixty like this: ‘One, two, three, four, five, seven, eighteen, thirty-five, forty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty – firing, ready or not—’

His ship jerked forward, ramming him back in his seat. That was one good thing about game space – you could do the kinds of turns and manouevres that, in real space, would leave the human body looking like thin pink lino across the cabin wall . . .

The fleet slid past, dwindling to a collection of dots behind him. A couple of laser beams crackled past, but some way away; it looked as though they were trying to frighten him off rather than kill him.

The ScreeWee had turned around. They were heading back deeper into game space. Why? They’d show up on people’s screens soon! There were always some players who’d go looking. Any day now some kid’d switch on his machine and there’d be wall-to-wall ScreeWee, heading straight for him. They weren’t safe even now. Yes – there were always some people who’d go looking . . .