One of the figures in the wreckage turns. Falco. Her face falls into shock, as if she’s looking at a walking corpse.

‘Doc?’

Then Silas is there, hurrying towards me only to stop, uncertain. Something else is wrong. The General isn’t among them. I look up in question.

‘They got her,’ Falco says, her mouth tight with rage and grief. ‘The bastards got her.’

* * *

As Silas begins the slow work of patching me up, Falco tells me what happened. How the General, upon hearing the Marshal’s gunshot and seeing me fall, went berserk, and – screaming orders to troops who did not exist – threw herself from the Charis, twelve feet to the ground, and attacked the Marshal with everything she had.

‘By the time I made it to the flight deck we were already too far up to help.’ Falco’s jaw works as she soaks a cloth in water from the pump. ‘We managed to reverse velocity, but then they opened fire and we had no choice but to get out. It was hours before we could land again. When we did, we found Joliffe gone, the place looted, whatever remaining Peacekeeper scum more interested in drinking than doing their jobs. We didn’t know where you were. Then we found Pec.’

Savagely, she rips open a dressing. We are gathered in the General Store, broken-windowed and ransacked as it is. The man who runs it does not like our being there. But he can see the head of Marshal Joliffe out in the sun, and so says nothing, only turns his dry, goat-yellow eyes on us from time to time as he sweeps up shattered plastic and gathers dead grubs to feed to the insects that survived.

‘The General?’ I ask weakly. The pain makes my head spin. I feel in the Marshal’s jacket for another bead.

‘We think they took her east someplace,’ Pegeen says, wan with exhaustion. ‘Horse told us, before he died. Said two Peacekeepers rode off with her. Alive, or he thought so.’

Closing my eyes, I remember the General’s strained tendons, the fever and frenzy as she disappeared into whatever battle she imagined she was fighting. If they beat her the way they had beaten me…

I try to stand, only to fall back against the wall, head spinning.

‘Stop it,’ Silas admonishes gently. ‘You may have got the bullet out, but that shoulder’s a mess.’ He’s been hurt too, his forehead patched up with sterile strips. I hiss as he eases the jacket away from my shoulder, exposing the filthy top and the tell-tale symbol that scars my chest.

‘What’s that?’ Falco’s eye is hawk-sharp.

‘It’s a special sign,’ Franzi says. His head is on his mother’s shoulder, his face bloodless. ‘We had one over the door. Ma Pec always said it was for protection. But it didn’t work, did it?’