‘We’re losing the muck, you’ll be pleased to know.’ Pegeen unhooks the trailer from Falco’s wagon, and reattaches it to two of the mares. They’re beautiful vehicles, up close; sleeker and faster than mules, painted in blue and gold dazzle, to blend with the desert shadows, I realise.

‘Take it to the nearest ranch,’ Falco is telling the G’hals who wait, ‘we might as well make some cash from it. Peg, you’re with us. And Boots.’ She nods to another of the G’hals with half-shaved short blue hair and thick-lensed glasses.

I climb onto the wagon, thankfully behind the driver’s seat this time, and settle the new hat onto my head. Falco’s clothes, I have to admit, are far better quality than my old ones, including as they do an armoured vest. At the last minute, without a word, Falco handed me a patterned scarf to hide my neck. Sometimes I wonder how much she suspects.

The General is already hunkered down in a seat, looking smaller than ever in a huge yellow canvas jacket, a bandana tied over her head to hide the tattoos. Although she has stopped heaving, the fabric over her forehead is wet with perspiration, and her lips pale and compressed.

In a few months, perhaps less, your body will fail you completely.

Is she truly dying? Or was that a lie, to trick her into submitting to her own termination?

Either way, there are no answers in Landfall. Falco kicks the engine into life, the G’hals whoop, and the wagon takes off, towards the hard white line of the horizon.

* * *

It will take almost two days’ riding to reach the Pit. We push the wagon hard, stopping only to relieve ourselves, or when the engines threaten to overheat beneath the beating sun. Falco – ever restless – passes the time by telling stories of her many adventures across the settled planets, from running an illegal poker den on a mining ship, to hawking stolen tinned peaches, to swindling a pair of bounty hunters in the Golden Web.

‘Doc, I ever tell you about the first scam I ran, in the AC?’

The General’s head jerks up.

‘You were in the Accord?’ she asks.

‘How can you ask me that?’ Falco replies in mock-outrage. ‘I joined up first chance I got to do my duty as a star-born daughter. To fight for law and order across our brave, new system and defeat the anarchists who threatened to tear us apart.’

I catch her grin in the wing mirror and fight back a smile of my own. There aren’t many who can make me laugh about the FL, these days.

‘If you were in the Accord,’ the General says suspiciously, ‘what happened to your tattoo?’

‘Had it removed. Properly, not by some drunk with a soldering iron.’

‘That’s illegal.’

‘Oh, I’ll tell the beautician who did it. I’m sure he’ll hand himself in.’