The palette-ship turned out to be simple to operate. After all, analysts in military labs had been taking apart Ghost technology for generations. All Hex had to do was slap her gloved palms flat against the palette’s hull, and her suit found a way to hack into its systems. Experimentally she raised her arm. The palette lifted, tipped and wobbled, a flying carpet on which they were all precariously sitting. But then the inertial control cut in properly, interfacing with their suits’ inertial packs, and she felt more secure.

‘Some ride this is going to be,’ Borno said.

‘Yes, and then what?’ Jul snapped.

‘We’ll deal with that when it comes,’ Hex said. ‘Have your suit weapons ready at all times.’

‘I think we’d better get on with it, pilot,’ Hella murmured.

Hex, through her visor’s systems, glanced around. She was a hundred metres above the ground, and the Ghost city was laid out beneath her, a chaotic tangle of silver cables. She could still see the bloody smears that were all that was left of the ur-Ghosts they had skinned. And silvery sparks were converging.

Hex called, ‘Everybody locked in? Three, two, one—’ She raised her arm again, and the palette shot skywards.

From space the extent of the ur-Ghosts’ betrayal of their cousins was clear. Their chrome-dipped cities clustered over every scrap of land, with only the ghostly blue-white of the ice cap left untouched. No wonder this terrible fratricidal episode was expunged from the Ghosts’ racial memory.

‘Pilot,’ Hella whispered. ‘The habitat. Theta ninety, phi twenty.’

Hex looked ahead. Riding high above the icy nightside clouds a structure was rising. At first glance it looked like typical Ghost architecture, a mesh of silver thread. But Hex made out a darker knot at the centre of the tangle.

So this was the bastion of the Black Ghost. It was no more than a kilometre away.

‘End game,’ Borno said softly.

‘Let’s move in.’ Hex raised her arms, and the platform slid forward.

Suddenly palette-ships came rushing out of the tangle like a flock of startled birds.

Jul cried out, ‘Lethe!’

Hella said tightly, ‘They’re going around us, pilot. Hold your line. Hold your line!’

Hex ground her teeth, and kept her hands steady as a rock. The fleet swarmed around her and banked as one, swooping down over the limb of the planet.

‘You’ve got to admire their coordination,’ Hella said. ‘I’ve never seen Ghost ships move like that.’

‘That’s the influence of the Black Ghost,’ said Borno.

‘They’re heading for the dayside,’ Jul murmured. ‘Swimmer and his people are going to get another pasting.’

Hex said firmly, ‘Then let’s see if we can put a stop to it.’

They covered the remaining distance quickly.

The palette slid into the habitat, among threads and ducts; it was like flying into the branches of a silvered tree. Though individual ur-Ghosts slid around the inner structure, nothing opposed them.