There was a noise like a very loud snap that she seemed to hear through her bones first and only then her assaulted ears, and a sort of bubble sprang into existence round Cossont’s head while her chest spasmed, her battered throat seemed to close up, her clothes bloomed then tore in a hundred tiny punctures and – as she tumbled across what felt like a smooth plate of super-cooled iron beneath her – feeling returned briefly to her extremities, tingling.

Pyan had gone limp at last, fluttering inanimately over the bubble of emergency helmet and blocking her view after briefly showing her the android starting to stand up on that dark terrible surface, then collapsing as though felled.

An enormous buzzing, humming sound overtook Cossont then.

Everything went dark and silent and fuzzy and surprisingly but comfortingly warm, and her last thought was, Shit, maybe it is all a sim …

“I’m told you had your two little pals back in the shop for a refit or something,” Marshal Chekwri said to the avatar Ziborlun.

Ziborlun nodded. “These old ships,” it said, with what might have sounded like a suppressed chuckle. “Constant maintenance.”

They were in one of the parliament building’s antechambers before the daily meeting of the Watch committee, which was supposed to take care of any outstanding matters in the days before the Instigation and Subliming.

This was mostly deadly dull stuff but the place was busier than it had been since the break-up of the parliament; a small throng of diplomats and other interested parties had got itself together on the strength of a rumour regarding the committee’s final decision on Scavengers.

“And then,” Ziborlun added, “they want some refitting done, the better to do long-range monitoring of all these Scavenger fleets and ships, and … well, of course what one wants the other has to get …” The silver-skinned avatar smiled down at the marshal.

“How like pets you make them sound.”

“I was thinking children, but the point stands.”

Ziborlun gazed round the antechamber as the doors to the committee chamber were opened. Two Liseiden were present in their globular float-suits like giant fish bowls, alongside Ambassador Mierbeunes, who was smiling broadly to all and sundry as though his grin was something unpleasant attached to his face and he was trying to find a place to wipe it off.

All six Ronte were present too, their bulky, insectile exo-suits all huddled together in one corner, bumping into each other and gently leaking fumes. They looked slightly more abject than usual, the avatar thought.

“Long-range monitoring equipment?” the marshal said as they joined everybody else filing into the committee chamber.

Ziborlun nodded again. “Yes,” the avatar said. In the chamber, the last three un-Stored trimes and a handful of septames, including Banstegeyn, were already seated round the raised table at the far end. “Long-range monitoring equipment.”

Technically this was true, if you defined the coaxial targeting components of multi-suite weapon clusters as such.