Either the wounded man didn’t know we were from his past, or he didn’t care. He told us in terse sentences how the Torch had been involved in a major engagement deep in the Fog. He had been a gunner, with a good view of the action from his starbreaker pod.

‘We came at a Sugar Lump. You ever seen one of those? A big old Xeelee emplacement. But the nightfighters were everywhere. We were taking a beating. The order came to fall back. We could see that damn Sugar Lump, close enough to touch. Well, the captain disregarded the fallback order.’

Tarco said sceptically, ’She disregarded an order?’

‘We crossed the chop line.’ A chop line is actually a surface, a military planner’s boundary between sectors in space - in this case, between the disputed territory inside the Fog and Xeelee-controlled space. The Xeelee had been suckered by the fallback, and the Torch broke through their lines. ‘We only lasted minutes. But we fired off a Sunrise.’

Tarco said, ‘A what?’ I kicked him, and he shut up.

Unexpectedly, the kid grabbed my arm. ‘We barely got home. But, Lethe, when that Sunrise hit, we nearly shook this old fish apart with our hollering, despite the pasting we were taking.’

Tarco asked maliciously, ‘How do you feel about Captain Dakk?’

‘She is a true leader. I’d follow her anywhere.’

All I felt was unease. No heroes: that’s one lesson of the Druz Doctrines, the creed that has held mankind together across fifteen thousand years, and drilled into every one of us by the Commissaries at their orientation sessions every day. If my future self had forgotten about that, something had gone wrong.

But now the gunner was looking at me intently. I became aware I was rubbing my thumb down my cheek. I dropped my hand and turned my face away.

Captain Dakk was standing before me. ‘Recognition. You’d better get used to that.’

‘I don’t want to,’ I groused. I was starting to resent the whole situation.

‘I don’t think what you, or I, want has much to do with it, ensign.’

I muttered to Tarco, ‘Lethe. Am I that pompous?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Dakk said, ‘I think we’re organised here for now. I’ll come back later when I can start thinking about damage control. In the meantime we’ve been ordered to your captain’s wardroom. Both of us.’

Tarco said hesitantly, ‘Sir - what’s a Sunrise?’

She looked surprised. ‘Right. You don’t have them yet. A Sunrise is a human-driven torpedo. A suicide weapon.’ She eyed me. ‘So you heard what happened in the Fog.’

‘A little of it.’

She cupped my cheek. It was the first time she had touched me. It was an oddly neutral sensation, like touching your own skin. ‘You’ll find out, in good time. It was glorious.’