As he stepped outside his quarters, Thorn again felt that strange twisting, and knew they had submerged yet again. The ensuing jump was also of short duration, for Thorn had taken only a few paces along the corridor before the ship surfaced again. Distantly, he heard machinery winding up to speed, and clanking sounds against the hull.

‘We are under attack,’ Haruspex noted.

Thorn ran for the ship’s bridge, Chalter and the other three unit leaders joining him soon after. The Haruspex bridge was similar to that of the NEJ: a wide expanse of floor seemingly resting out in vacuum. Thorn discerned a distant vessel, and small objects swarming through space, close all around. To his far right he could see the Coriolanus, its laser strobing the cloud surrounding it. As the ranking officer aboard Haruspex, Thorn occupied one of the acceleration chairs available and leant back. Chalter and the others stood back, remaining out of the way, as it would not do to have too many people involved in this. Images of other chairs began to blink into existence: the human commander of the Sparkind aboard Coriolanus, and Cormac aboard the NEJ. There were no humans present from the Belisarius, though a hologram of the ship’s avatar—a large chesspiece knight—did flicker into existence. Jack the hangman also appeared, along with Coriolanus the Roman legionary leaning on his spear, and Haruspex itself appearing as a floating crystal ball. All projection.

‘It seems the Legate has just led us into some kind of set defence,’ Cormac observed.

No shit, thought Thorn as he observed a pumpkin-seed object go hurtling past propelled by a bright fusion flame, then tracked by laser and turned to vapour.

‘Why are we visible?’ he asked.

Cormac held up a hand and turned towards the legionary image. ‘You’ve received five hits, what’s your current situation?’

‘They are not explosive, rather Jain subversion tech which, given time, would have completely subsumed this ship. I have destroyed them: three from outside by laser, the other two from the inside with a particle cannon.’

‘You see,’ added the human from the Coriolanus—Bhutan, a thin individual with pallid hairless skin and eyes like razor shards, who sported twinned military augs, one on each side of his head -’we flew straight into them, so chameleonware was no defence.’ He glanced at Thorn. ‘There are so many of the damned things, we have to use proximity lasers, and the resulting weapons drain negates the ‘ware effect.’

Thorn had not known that fact. ‘The alien vessel?’ he asked.

Cormac replied, ‘Completely ignored, and flying right through them.’

‘Has it seen us?’ Thorn asked.