‘Good, because we don’t have much left. I salvaged some filtration packs, but I doubt they would cope with the swamp, and it’s a couple of months until the rainy season.’

Her voice had that dead quality again, like before the attack. My memory was in pieces, the flashes interspersed by the nebulous hellscape. Perhaps the orks’ weapon produced some mind-altering effect, inducing hallucinations or psychosis. I clung to that, for it meant what I had seen wasn’t real, even if my aching soul told me otherwise.

But what did it mean for Shard?

‘I’m… surprised we survived,’ I said, the words blades to my throat.

‘You can thank the swamp. It absorbed most of the impact.’

‘You do not claim credit?’

She shrugged. ‘How can I? I have never been shot down. I have no frame of reference for what one is supposed to do.’ She continued to carve as she spoke, the blade sliding against the wood.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Making a splint,’ she replied. ‘Or maybe a stake. I haven’t decided yet.’

‘A splint?’

‘You need to be mobile.’

‘I cannot walk.’

‘Then you will die here,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps we both will.’

‘You think it will find us?’

‘The Green Storm? No. We are miles from it.’

‘That’s impossible. They shot us down. We fell.’

‘Whilst you slept I located Orbital Station Salus with my magnoculars. We are at least a hundred miles from both it and the storm.’

‘Could the tempest have moved? Perhaps following Salus?’

‘I doubt it could get far missing an engine. It’s us. We were transported here.’

‘The lightning.’

‘Yes. It’s some sort of teleporter. Almost like warp travel. That might explain… what we saw in there…’

She trailed off, gaze falling to her feet. Her knife slowed.

‘I have traversed the warp many times in my travels,’ I said. ‘I know there are tales of its dangers, but I’ve never seen anything like that.’

‘That’s because warp craft have Geller fields,’ she replied. ‘They shield the vessel during the passage. You ever been caught in a warp storm?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I have,’ she said. ‘I was spared the worst. But some of the crew… Let’s just say the galaxy has horrors worse than orks. We were lucky to escape with our souls intact.’

I considered her words. Not the nonsense regarding warp travel, which struck me as a tall tale of dubious validity. But the orks clearly had a means of launching raids without warning, and during the bombing run I had seen them appear as if from nowhere. Perhaps they did have such a device, and we had been flung miles from the sky-fortress.

‘Do you think you crippled it?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘The ork’s sky-fortress! The Green Storm!’