The Queen Crimson was coming up fast now, opening its red-lit mouth like a hungry fish set on swallowing a tiddler. For all his faults as an actual captain, Trusko at least knew how to operate the launch. He was playing those rockets and steering jets like they were organ stops, concentration making something of his face I hadn’t seen before. A different set of features was breaking through the softness, hinting at the harder man he might have been, if his stars had favoured him differently. We all have it in us to be something other than what we are, I thought, but we don’t often get a glimpse of what we could have been.

Most of us are better off for the not knowing.

The Queenie’s hull flashed along its flanks on one side, like a chain of fireworks. That was the coil-guns going off, the electromagnetics in them heating up so hard and fast that they shone.

‘Pre-emptive fire, Trusko!’ Bosa sounded impressed, in a mocking sort of way. ‘And just when we were getting on so well, discussing terms, polite as you can be. Bosa’s shocked, shocked, to the very core of her being.’

The squawk screamed out a roar of static, and off to one side, visible to my own eyes, I saw the flash of the Nightjammer’s return volley. I couldn’t tell if she was ten leagues away or a hundred, all that I knew was that she was too close, and that Trusko could forget any thought of cutting and running.

I watched a dozen slugs rain against the Queenie, scabbing off parts of her hull where they landed. One clanged against the launch and sent us into a wild tumble that Trusko only just had time to correct before we were angling into the docking mouth. Bosa could have hit us much harder if she meant to, though. That was a scatterfire volley, normally intended to rip away sails and rigging, immobilising a ship rather than gutting her. The Queenie didn’t even have her sails run out, but Bosa’s point had been to let us know she could take us, even if for the moment she chose not to.

It was a straight fight Trusko could never win. Rackamore had burned out his coil-guns before he did any harm to Bosa, and I didn’t doubt the same would apply here. We were outgunned, and in a way it was a kindness of her to point it out.

The launch slammed into its docking cradle. Behind us, the door began to close its jaws. Weightless again now, we undid our restraints. ‘I’ll go first,’ Trusko said, rising from his control position. ‘I’ll speak to Drozna, Surt and Tindouf, tell them what’s happening. You can follow through when I’ve explained about the Ghostie armour.’