‘And there’s more.’ Again, I glimpsed humanity in that frosted-over Commissary. ‘In four months’ time you will report to the birthing complex on Base 592. There you will request impregnation by Ensign Hama Tarco, here.’

Tarco quickly took his hand off my back.

‘Permission will be granted,’ said Varcin. ‘I’ll see to that.’

I didn’t believe it. Then I got angry. I felt like I was in a trap. ‘How do you know I’ll want a kid by Tarco? No offence, butthead.’

‘None taken,’ said Tarco, sounding bemused.

Now the Commissary looked irritated. ‘How do you think I know? Haven’t you noticed the situation we’re in? Because it’s in the Torch’s record. Because the child you will bear—’

‘Will be on the Torch, with me,’ said Dakk. ‘His name was Hama.’

I swear Tarco blushed.

‘Was? The kid was called Hama?’ I felt a kind of panic. Perhaps it was the tug of a maternal bond that couldn’t yet exist, fear for the well-being of a child I’d only just learned about. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? He died, out there in the Fog.’

Varcin murmured, ‘One step at a time, remember, ensign.’

Dakk leaned forward. ‘Yes, he died. He rode the Sunrise. He was the one who took a monopole bomb into the Xeelee Sugar Lump. You see? Your child, Dakk. Our child. He was a hero.’

One step at a time. I kept repeating that to myself. But it was as if the wardroom was spinning around.

II

In Dakk’s yacht, I sailed around the huge flank of the Assimilator’s Torch. Medical tenders drifted alongside, hosing some kind of sealant into the living ship’s mighty wounds.

The injured Spline had been allowed to join a flotilla of its kind, regular ships of the line. Living starships the size of cities are never going to be graceful, but I saw that their movements were coordinated, a vast dance. They even snuggled against each other, like great fish jostling.

Dakk murmured, ‘Some of these battered beasts have been in human employ for a thousand years or more. We rip out their brains and their nervous systems - we amputate their minds - and yet something of the self still lingers, a need for others of their kind, for comfort. So we let the distressed swim together for a while.’

I listened absently.

The yacht docked, and the captain and I were piped aboard the Torch. I found myself in a kind of cave, buttressed by struts of some cartilaginous material. The lighting had been fixed, the on-board gravity restored.

We wandered through orifices and along round-walled passageways, pushing deeper into the body of the Spline. We saw none of Dakk’s crew, only repair workers from the Base.