‘The fewer people who know about her,’ he gestured at Hannah, ‘the better.’

Officer Taiken didn’t like that, since it suggested that not all of his men were to be trusted. As they reached the craft, its recognition system picked up on him, opened its doors and lowered some steps. Taiken stepped up inside first, and even as Saul waved Hannah up ahead of him, she realized something was wrong. Saul seemed to be in pain, pressing the heel of his hand between his eyes before climbing in behind her. Door motors hummed into life, closing the door behind them, and Taiken turned, with a brief look of confusion on his face, just before the edge of Saul’s hand slammed into the base of his skull. He went down like a sack of potatoes.

‘Ack! Jesus!’ Saul stumbled away from the fallen man, and went down into a squat. He retched, bringing up nothing but bile, then just crouched there, gasping.

‘Saul . . .’ Hannah took a step over towards him, but just then Taiken groaned and began to make an effort to rise. Saul’s head snapped up, and she saw his eyes were weeping bloody tears. He lurched to his feet and stumbled over towards Taiken, descending to drive a knee into the man’s spine, then, grabbing Taiken’s head, he pulled it back and twisted hard.

The horrible gristly sound seemed to punch Hannah in the stomach, and she turned away, pressing herself against the wall of the aero. ‘Is it necessary always to kill them?’ she protested, but that seemed about as effectual as appealing to a guillotine, and she hated the whine in her voice.

‘I’ve shut down all their links to Govnet here,’ Saul rasped, ‘but it won’t take them long to open up some other channel, once they find they’re offline. Then he could identify us.’

Already he had the aero’s engines starting up, its fans whirling up to speed. It had to be him, since the cockpit stood empty.

‘So can others out there,’ she remarked.

‘Yes, I know.’

Just that? Did he mean he had already set something in motion to deal with the problem?

He moved past her towards the cockpit, and she followed him inside. As he strapped himself in, he gestured to the seat beside him. She plumped herself down and began to fumble with the straps.

‘You have reservations,’ he suggested, his voice tight and angry.

‘You might be just like Malden: possibly worse than what you’re fighting.’

Saul winced, wiped his eyes and studied the watery blood smeared on his hand. ‘You heard what they’re intending here?’

‘They’re going to gas the survivors.’

‘Whether I’m worse than them or not is irrelevant,’ he snapped. ‘This is about survival now, not morality.’

He took the override off the controls before him, and grabbed hold of them, then lifted the aero up into the sky.