‘You’re very well equipped,’ Chetta commented as she settled the mask into place over her face. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, but it would undoubtedly be better than attempting to breathe the polluted soup outside.

‘Simple practicalities,’ Ngiri replied. She’d completed her armour by donning her helmet, with a quick and well-practised flick of her hair to get it clear of the neck seal, and now spoke from behind red-lit eye-lenses on which would undoubtedly be superimposed telemetry from sensors such as range-finders and heat sensors. ‘There could be a catastrophic coolant gas leak in any part of the ship, for example. You need hazard gear readily available in all locations. Happily, that means we have spares.’ The inquisitor looked around. ‘Comm check.’

They’d all synchronised their personal comm-beads, and sounded off one at a time. Then, with Fell leading the way, they began to negotiate their way out of the dead craft.

The ship’s hatches had to be operated manually, to prevent the choking atmosphere from leaking into the hold where Kennevario, Anthons and Sica were to remain: a task mainly completed by Fell’s bionic arm with nudges from Carmine’s powers. Then once the final hatch had been opened, Chetta found herself faced with what remained of the rear of the ship.

Whatever the Jo’Sin craft had fired at them had been effective. It had torn a huge rent in the rear fuselage, ripping right through into what must have been the galley. Chetta picked her way carefully over the warped metal beneath her feet, then out through the mangled hull, and finally onto the barren ground of stones and dirt beyond. She activated the luminator in her left hand, which did little more than turn a cone of smog from a big dark blur to a big light blur.

‘I’ll say this for the Vorlesians,’ the shape that was Ngiri commented, her visor turning this way and that. ‘When they set about polluting a place, by the Emperor do they do a job of it. I can barely make out a thing.’

‘We were flying through the city,’ someone said. Carmine, Chetta thought, although with his voice coming directly into her ear, and everyone little more than shadows in the gloom and their mouths covered by respirators, it was virtually impossible to say for sure. ‘Surely we must be surrounded by hab blocks?’