Mari felt fear coil beneath her shock. She had spent the entire trip inside this emplacement, a station stuck to the outer flesh of a Spline ship; here she had bunked, messed, lived; here was her primary function, the operation of a starbreaker beam. Get out? Where to?

‘. . . Academician Kapur first, then Officer Mace. Then anybody else who’s still moving . . .’

‘Sir, the action—’

‘Is over.’ For a heartbeat Jarn’s shrill voice softened. ‘Over for us, gunner. Now our duty is to keep ourselves alive. Ourselves, and the Academician, and the wetback. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Move it.’ Jarn spun away, hauling pressure cloaks out of lockers.

Mari grabbed a cloak out of the smoke-filled air. Jarn was right; the first thing you had to do in a situation like this was to make sure you could keep functioning yourself. The semi-sentient material closed up around her, adjusting itself as best it could. There was a sharp tingle at her forehead as the cloak started to work on her wound. The cloak was too small; it hurt as it tried to enfold her stocky shoulders, her muscular legs. Too late to change it now.

Jarn had already opened a hatch at the back of the emplacement. She was pushing bodies through as fast as she could cram them in. Seeing Mari, she jabbed a finger, directing Mari towards Kapur.

The Academician - here because he was the nearest thing to an expert on the action’s target - was drifting, limbs stiff, hands clutched in front of his face. Mari had to pull his hands away. His eye sockets were pits of ruin; the implanted Eyes there had burned out.

No time for that. She forced herself to close the cloak over his face. Then she pushed him by main force towards Jarn’s open hatchway.

Next she came to Mace, the wetback, the Navy officer. He was bent forward over a sensor post. When she pulled him back she saw that both legs had been crudely severed, somewhere below the knee. Blood pumped out of broken vessels in sticky zero-G globules. His mouth gaped, strands of bloody drool floating around his face.

Her cloak had a medical kit. She ripped this open now and dug out a handful of gel. Shuddering at the touch of splintered bone and ragged flesh, she plastered the gel hastily over the raw wounds. The gel settled into place, turning pale blue as it sealed vessels, sterilised, dissolved its substance into a blood replacement, and started the process of promoting whatever healing was possible. Then she dragged a cloak around Mace and hurled him bodily towards Jarn and the hatch.

Under the alarm, she realised now, the noise had subsided. No more screaming. Nobody left in the emplacement was moving, nobody but her.