This virtual space presented itself to the colonel now, overlaid transparently across the view-filling expanse of the star Izenion, which seemed to hang in space directly in front of him: vast, astounding, like a furiously boiling cauldron of yellow-white flames he was staring straight down into, seemingly suspended so close that instinct insisted it must be impossible not to be burned alive by the sheer pulverising force of its fires. It was almost a relief to tear his attention from the unforgiving ferocity of the sun and redirect it to the image of the ship’s captain.

“We have our quarry, Colonel.”

A read-out indicated how much the captain’s virtual being was having to slow down to talk with Agansu. The colonel had combat-grade augmentation to allow him to think and react far faster than any basic human, and was using it wrung to its maximum now, but he still thought and – for example – conversed at speeds that could be tens of thousands of times slower than did the virtual personalities of the crew, housed and running within the computational matrix of the ship.

Being so slow in comparison to others might have embarrassed or troubled certain people, but the colonel simply accepted that different martial requirements led to individual elements of the military occupying a variety of martial niches.

“Thank you, Captain,” he said.

Beyond the ghostly image of the ship’s virtual master, a green circle blinked against the face of the star. Some sub-system monitoring Agansu’s senses registered him glancing at the highlighted circle and zoomed in for him, showing – once the circle had bloomed almost to the same size as the image of the whole sun moments earlier – a tiny dark fleck right in the centre of the rapidly pulsing green halo. Whatever it was, it looked microscopic against the magnified flamescape beyond, though Agansu knew this meant little; an entire naturally habitable planet would appear as no more than a dot against the vastness of the sun.

“Do we have comms?” he asked.

“We do, sir,” the comms officer replied. “They’ve just started signalling us. As ordered, we’ve not yet replied. Your call, sir.”

“And they can’t signal elsewhere?”

“Indeed,” the captain said. “We have them contained, unless they have signalling equipment of a type we would not expect, relevant either to the small craft we tracked from Eshri or the old solar research and monitoring station where they have taken refuge.”

“You are content that I may make contact privately?”

“Of course,” the captain replied. “Those are our orders.”

“Shall I open the link, sir?” the comms officer asked Agansu.

“Please do.”

The background image of the enormous circular lake of boiling stellar fire, and the foreground transparency of the command space of an antique capital ship complete with human crew at their various stations, disappeared to be replaced initially by a sort of fuzzy darkness.