Tarco and I reacted somewhat badly to this sight. But already med cloaks were snuggling around the wounded tar, gentle as a lover’s caress.

I looked up at the Commissary, who was standing patiently. ‘Sir? Can you tell us why we are here?’

‘We received ident signals from the Torch when it downfolded. There’s somebody here who will want to meet you.’

‘Sir, who—’

‘It’s better if you see for yourself.’

One of the Torch crew approached us. She was a woman, I saw, about my height. There was no hiding the bloodstains and scorches and rips, or the way she limped; there was a wound in her upper thigh that actually smoked. But she had captain’s pips on her collar.

I felt I knew her face - that straight nose, the small chin - despite the dirt that covered her cheeks and neck, and the crust of blood that coated her forehead. She had her hair grown out long, with a ponytail at the back, quite unlike my regulation crew-cut. But - this was my first impression - her face seemed oddly reversed, as if she was a mirror image of what I was used to.

I immediately felt a deep, queasy unease.

I don’t know many captains, but she immediately recognised me. ‘Oh. It’s you.’

Tarco had become very tense. It turned out he had thought the situation through a little further than I had. ‘Commissary, what engagement has the Torch come from?’

‘The Fog.’

My mouth dropped. Every tar on Base 592 knew that the Fog is an interstellar cloud - and a major Xeelee concentration - situated inside 3-Kilo, a good hundred light years deeper towards the centre of the Galaxy. I said, ‘I didn’t know we were hitting the enemy so deep.’

‘We aren’t. Not yet.’

‘And,’ Tarco said tightly, ‘here we are greeting a battle-damaged ship that hasn’t even left Earth yet.’

‘Quite right,’ Varcin said approvingly. ‘Ensigns, you are privileged to witness this. This ship is a survivor of a battle that won’t happen for another twenty-four years.’

Tarco kind of spluttered.

As for me, I couldn’t take my eye off the Torch’s captain. Tense, she was running her thumb down the side of her cheek.

‘I do that,’ I said stupidly.

‘Oh, Lethe,’ she said, disgusted. ‘Yes, tar, I’m your older self. Get over it. I’ve got work to do.’ And with a glance at the Commissary she turned and stalked back towards her ship.

Varcin said gently, ‘Go with her.’

‘Sir—’

‘Do it, ensign.’

Tarco followed me. ‘So in twenty-four years you’re still going to be a buttface.’

I realised miserably he was right.

The three of us pushed through the narrow passageway into the Torch. The gravity was lumpy, and I suspected that it was being fed in from the Kard’s inertial generators.