In case I’ve given the wrong impression, we didn’t storm the galley and start hacking away. We came in stealthy as shadows, quiet as cats, and because of the Ghostie armour, and the unfamiliarity of the place, Bosa’s two grunts didn’t notice they had company until it was much too late. Credit to Trusko, too: if he batted an eyelid, I didn’t see it. Maybe the cove was too punched about to notice us, but I don’t think so. I reckon there was enough alertness going on in his noggin to appreciate that Bosa’s fortunes were about to take a severe dip, one that would make Black Shatterday look like a good day’s trading.

I’ll spare you the graphics of how we hacked ’em up, or what parts we detached from other parts, and what they made of it as it was going on. Suffice to say it wasn’t pretty, and if I ever have nightmares about my time on the Queenie, which happens more than you’d think, that’s the part that they tend to linger over. But while we weren’t kind to them, exactly, we weren’t cruel either, at least not in Bosa’s league.

Besides, we didn’t want them screaming and screaming, drawing Bosa from the squawk.

That’s what happened, though.

She came back into the galley from the bridge with that silver suit on, the one I’d glimpsed through the lookstone, when she was just a tiny figure on the launch. I supposed she’d been trying to use our squawk to signal back to the Nightjammer, that being quicker and simpler than going back to her launch, but she was finding out for herself how damaged the squawk was.

Now she was finding something else out.

Bosa still had her helmet on. She was looking around the galley, her back to the bridge, drinking in what had happened while she had her attention snared by the squawk. There wasn’t any part of her face I could see. The suit was sleek and tight-fitting, silver where the others were black, but otherwise similar. Even the visor was silver, but she must have been able to see through it by some means.

She took in Trusko, still bound to the chair, but with dead bodies flanking him. Blood was everywhere, dark red nebulas of it, all clotted and ropey even as they drifted around the room. Slowly Bosa must have cottoned on that she wasn’t alone. What she could see of us, I couldn’t speculate. But some itchy intution told her we were present.

She reached up and touched a toggle on the neck of her suit. Her voice came out exactly as it sounded over the squawk, with all the same static and interference and looping echoes.

‘Well, that’s a turn. Not much surprises Bosa, but you’ve done yourselves proud. What is it – Ghostie gubbins?’