The figure stomped on, coming nearer to the window. It bent down to a piece of low, heavy equipment mounted on the outside of the hull. It had a powerful, compact look to it, like some iron beast squatting before a pounce. I wondered for a second if it might have been one of the guns, then recognised it as part of the sail-control gear.

‘Hirtshal!’ Prozor called. ‘There isn’t time!’

‘Yes,’ he answered.

Hirtshal curled a fist around a handle and tugged so hard on it that the recoil severed the magnetic bond between his boots and the hull. The equipment sprang away from the hull on a coil-driven hinge, swinging high and wide like a catapult.

From its end spilled an inky mass of tightly packed rigging, furling out into a ragged, billowing net.

Hirtshal regained his hold on the hull plating and ducked, raising one arm over his helmet in self-preservation. Still tumbling, still putting out gas, the launch passed the front of the Monetta. The rigging was unpacking itself, magically unknotting. The launch was already starting to drift into that smoky confusion, faint threads of rigging cloying their way around the tumbling hull, offering the beginnings of resistance . . .

‘He’s done it,’ I said. ‘Hirtshal caught the launch!’

The threads tightened, and then we felt the jerk as the momentum of the launch was transferred to the Monetta. The sail-control gear strained under the load, and the launch began to move in an arc, until it clanged against the hull, drifted off, and stopped. It was lashed to us, but safe.

Hirtshal began to pick his way through the tangle he had made. Prozor was clanging into view in her own set of magnetic boots.

Triglav tried the console again, flipping between different channels. There was still only static. The flow of gas from the hole in the launch had begun to taper off.

A door popped open in the side of the launch. Lungstuff blasted out and a fist appeared, then a forearm, then a brown-suited form clambered out of the wreck, almost immediately tangling themselves in the rigging. Another figure.

Triglav was next to me, still with his visor pushed up.

‘Shouldn’t you be firing the guns?’ I asked.

‘Coils heat up pretty fast if you sustain fire.’ He settled his sad eyes onto mine. ‘We’re not a battleship, girlie. This ain’t what we do for a living.’

Prozor and Hirtshal had pulled knives out of their belts and were hacking through the rigging, helping to untangle the survivors of the launch party. Two were outside now, and a third was coming out of the lock. That one had a white patch on the crown of their helmet, just as Rackamore’s had done.

Adrana said: ‘Something new on the sweeper, Triglav.’

‘Multiple contacts, between us and the other ship?’

‘I think so.’