First Officer Till came bustling back with a heap of equipment. ‘Put these on.’ He handed out pressure suits. They were what we called slime suits in training: lightweight skinsuits, running off a backpack of gen-enged algae. ‘Move it,’ said Till. ‘Impact with the Ghost cruiser in four minutes. We don’t have any power; there’s nothing we can do but ride it out.’

I crammed my legs into my suit.

Jeru complied, stripping off her robe to reveal a hard, scarred body. But she was frowning. ‘Why not heavier armour?’

For answer, Till picked out a gravity-wave handgun from the gear he had retrieved. Without pausing he held it to Pael’s head and pushed the fire button.

Pael twitched.

Till said, ‘See? Nothing is working. Nothing but bio systems, it seems. They have been spared, presumably deliberately - that is a characteristic Ghost tactic. They disable your weapons but leave you alive.’ He threw the gun aside.

Pael closed his eyes, breathing hard.

Till said to me, ‘Test your comms.’

I closed up my hood and faceplate and began intoning, ‘One, two, three . . .’ I could hear nothing.

Till began tapping at our backpacks, resetting the systems. His hood started to glow with transient, pale blue symbols. And then, scratchily, his voice started to come through. ‘. . . Five, six, seven - can you hear me, tar?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The symbols were bioluminescent. There were receptors on all our suits - photoreceptors, simple eyes - which could ‘read’ the messages scrawled on our companions’ suits. It was a backup system meant for use in Ghost-ridden environments where anything higher-tech would be a liability. But obviously it would only work as long as we were in line of sight.

‘That will make life harder,’ Jeru said. Oddly, mediated by software, she was easier to understand.

Till shrugged. ‘You take it as it comes.’ Briskly, he began to hand out more gear. ‘These are basic field kits. There’s some medical stuff: a suture kit, scalpel blades, blood-giving sets. You wear these syrettes around your neck, Academician. They contain painkillers, various gen-enged med-viruses . . . No, you wear it outside your suit, Pael, so you can reach it. You’ll find valve inlets here, on your sleeve, and here, on the leg.’ Now came weapons. ‘We should carry handguns, just in case they start working, but be ready with these. ‘ He handed out combat knives.

Pael shrank back.

‘Take the knife, Academician. You can shave off that ugly beard, if nothing else.’

I laughed out loud, and was rewarded with a wink from Till.

I took a knife. It was a heavy chunk of steel, solid and reassuring. I tucked it in my belt. I was starting to feel a whole lot better.

‘Two minutes to impact,’ Jeru said. I didn’t have a working chronometer; she must have been counting the seconds.