Yuri recovered consciousness amid a cluster of slowly deflating airbags that had completely filled the four-by-four’s interior. A lot of the flaccid white fabric in front of him was smeared with blood. The roof was below him, and the windows were all a mosaic of cracks, though amazingly they’d retained their integrity.

Horatio Seymore was sprawled on the roof beside him. Yuri watched for a few moments, checking that the boy was still breathing. Then he heard Jessika groaning. When he looked around, he saw she was hanging upside down in the front seat safety harness, blood dribbling out of her nose to run down her forehead.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“Just peachy, thanks.” She dabbed at her nose and winced. “What the fuck just happened?”

“I have no idea.”

Juloss

JULOSS

YEAR 587 AA

Muncs didn’t normally have names. It wasn’t an infraction, but the clan’s grown-ups had always discouraged it; the cohort should be uniform, they explained, no favorites. Language was also considered a communication impediment. Muncs should know their master’s wishes without having to be designated and instructed; instinctive identification of any requirement or deployment was so much quicker. That also meant the boys had to learn how to communicate those commands at a subliminal level. The process was symbiotic.

Yirella had been five or six when she started mentally assigning her two muncs as Uno and Dos. They’d been studying old Earth languages at the time, and she’d liked the softness of classical Spanish. By the time she was seven, Uno had become Uma, because even Yirella rather enjoyed the idea of having a goddess as a companion, while Dos had become Doony—for no reason whatsoever except it sounded kind of fun. When she reached eight the names had become an ingrained facet of their association, and even Alexandre had given up asking her not to use them.

Now as Yirella leaned on the wall, staring through the big window into the treatment room, Uma and Doony had their arms wrapped around her legs in a loving hug. Her hands stroked their skulls, providing reassurance that she was all right and still cared for them despite leaving them behind for eleven days. When the rescue flyer had landed back at the Immerle estate, everyone’s cohorts had come charging out of the dormitory to greet them. They ran into a wave of emotion—the relief and stress her yearmates were radiating in the wake of their ordeal. The poor muncs, expecting a happy reunion, had reacted badly, demanding affection, embracing their masters and mistresses in unbreakable hugs. It had taken a long time to calm things down. Uranti, the munc-tech, was called to deal with Dellian’s semi-hysterical cohort, to allow the doctors to treat their injured master without having to constantly bat them away.