“You’re going to kill it!” Cossont replied, sticking three arms out to try and fend the android off. She was fully aware how useless this was going to be, even if she’d been some sort of fully trained and augmented special agent, which she wasn’t. She had fantasised about four arms and four fists giving her a real edge in a fight, but was under no illusion that she had any chance against the android. She even knew that the machine was right, and if whatever had taken over the dead trooper’s suit was now trying to take over Pyan – fat chance that promiscuous, easily led creature would put up a fight anyway – they might well all be about to die.

Still, she just found the idea of her familiar being turned off, killed by the android, simply revolting. Perhaps she couldn’t stop it happening, but she could at least put up a fight. That this was probably more than Pyan would have done for her in roughly similar but reversed circumstances was beside the point.

“I could probably,” Parinherm whispered, halting just beyond the reach of her furthest outstretched hand, “do this just through comms, straight in, straight through you without touching, but induction is more subtle.”

“Don’t do it at all!” Cossont hissed. Her hands were shaking. “Leave her alone!”

Parinherm looked at her oddly, an expression that might have indicated suspicion crossed his face, then he seemed to shake himself. “It is an it, not a her,” he informed her, sounding cross. Cossont realised that he – it – probably thought of itself in the same way, even though she had quickly come to think of it as male. “Now, if you please,” he said, reaching his hand out towards hers again.

Cossont thought about making a grab for the dead trooper’s carbine, but it was too far away, almost behind the android; she’d never get there in time.

Parinherm went to put his hand to one side, curving past hers, then he stopped. He straightened a little. “Ah,” he said, in his normal, conversational voice, a smile on his face. “This probably is end-run!”

Something hit the little up-ended craft, throwing Cossont off her feet and sending the android staggering back against the dead trooper’s body. The shuttle’s rear door burst open, flapping outwards. The chill air inside the tiny craft fogged white and rushed out, disappearing over a dark and airless plain, sucking Cossont and the android out with it in a brief storm that seemed to start to roar but quickly died away to nothing.

Somebody or something shrieked – it might have been her, with a last breath ripped out of her, leaving her throat suddenly raw and burning – but, before she knew about it, that had gone too, replaced by a ringing silence and pain in her ears as though they’d been stabbed with spikes.