As the Black Ghost suffered its death throes, the assassin came drifting to Borno’s vacated station.

Hex asked, ‘Integumentary?’

Hella said, ‘How do you keep doing this?’

‘I suggest you get us out of here, pilot,’ said the Ghost. ‘Without leadership the troops are paralysed, but they will react soon. If you want to live—’

‘Not without Borno,’ Jul said.

‘He’s already dead,’ said the Ghost.

‘No!’

The Integumentary spun in its station and spat another bullet, this time neatly lancing through Borno’s limp body. ‘Now can we go?’

Hex grimly drew her hands towards her lap. The palette shot backwards out of the bastion, and into open space.

VII

The palette hovered at the rim of the system. The misty, dying star of the Ghosts was still visible, as was its intensely blue companion.

‘They won’t find you here,’ the Integumentary said, still nestling in Borno’s vacated pod.

Commodore Teel’s disembodied head appeared before Hex. ‘So the Black Ghost is dead. Good. Now we will see how the war turns out. You did well, Hex.’

‘Borno did well.’

‘He will be remembered.’

The Integumentary seemed to feel its plan had worked out as it hoped. It had been able to penetrate the Black Ghost’s bastion, even smuggle in a weapon so crude it wasn’t picked up by the defensive systems. But it could never have penetrated the Black Ghost’s hide if not for Borno’s attack, which the Black Ghost clearly hadn’t anticipated.

Teel said, ‘So the most powerful Ghost in generations was defeated by human qualities: Borno’s raw anger and courage, and the Black Ghost’s own arrogance.’

The Integumentary murmured, ‘And what could be more human than savagery and arrogance?’

Hex was still trying to understand what had happened. ‘Ghost, when your sun died, there was a bloody battle for survival. You’ve spent a million years denying that about yourselves. But the Black Ghost saw it was precisely that streak of primitive brutality you had to rediscover to fight humanity. It might even have succeeded. But you couldn’t bear the image of yourself it showed you, could you?’

The Integumentary said, ‘The Black Ghost was an anomaly. This is not what we are, what we aspire to be.’

Teel looked at Hex. ‘Pilot, it isn’t just their past that the Ghosts want to expunge, but what they have glimpsed of their future - or anyhow that’s what the analysts in the Commission for Historical Truth have made of this incident.’