It didn’t take long to connect to Adrana. It didn’t surprise me that she was on skull watch during the middle of the attack, for Bosa would still be looking for any useful intelligence on us.

‘Fura . . .’ she said, her voiceless presence whispering into my brain. ‘You’re alive. I’m so glad. When she opened up the coil-guns . . .’

‘She didn’t want to hurt us too badly,’ I said. ‘Not yet. When she’s got the skull, it’ll be a different game. But we’re ready for her.’

‘As ready as Rackamore was?’

‘This’ll be different. But I have to know. We think she brought seven people with her – eight in total on the launch.’

‘Yes, that tallies.’ She didn’t ask me how I knew, and I was glad of that, for it spared me explaining the lookstone to her. ‘Bosa wasn’t counting on a fight, or else she’d have sent them over with harpoons, rocket packs and magnetic boots, to land on your hull from outside.’

‘Then we’ve still got her where we want – thinking she’s ahead of us. Do you know how many are left on the Nightjammer?’

‘Five, including me. What’s going to happen, Fura?’

That was when I heard someone tug at the wheel to the bone room.

‘Blood,’ I said, and closed the connection. Then, to myself: ‘Blood’s what’s going to happen.’

The wheel was still turning.

I slipped off the neural bridge, redonned the Ghostie mask, and detached the long-bladed weapon from my armour. My hand was closed around something solid, but there was still no presence to it. I might as well have been trying to hold onto a column of fast-moving lungstuff, the blade weighed so little.

I pressed back against the wall, to the right of the door. The wheel stopped turning and the door creaked wide. I held my breath, jammed tight against that wall. It was still dark in the bone room, and my eyes had had time to adjust to it.

I wasn’t expecting it to be Bosa who jammed her head through the door, and it wasn’t. The suit was polished black, gleaming like someone had spent a lot of hours and spit getting it that way. Our suits were too bulky to move around easily in the Queenie, but Bosa’s were some older and better technology, and the coves inside them must have barely felt they were encumbered. That was good if you were sweeping through an enemy ship, mowing down the opposition, but not so good when a little caution was the order of the day.

Like now.