The missile moved off so fast it was as though it was a shell in a perfectly transparent gun barrel; it just disappeared, leaving behind only an after-image and the vaguest of impressions it had headed away in the direction its sharp end had been pointing. Berdle’s head jerked back in the blast of air and Cossont was only saved from being blown off her feet by the avatar reaching back with one silvery hand and grabbing her by the bag’s strap again. The thunder-clap echoed off the surrounding shelves and the ceiling.

Berdle shook his head as he resumed walking. “Knife missiles,” he said over his shoulder, with what sounded like affection.

“Yeah, knife missiles,” Cossont agreed, like she knew what she was talking about. She glanced back, but could see little through the smoke. “You sure there’s nobody else coming after us?”

“Not completely, no,” Berdle admitted, “but there doesn’t seem to be.” He sounded thoughtful. “The Gzilt ship present here is at least a sixth-level heavy cruiser, possibly a seventh-level battle-cruiser; that’d mean between one and three platoons of marines available, at least, but they aren’t being used. So that might say something about the secrecy and … well, authorisation of the mission involved.” He shrugged. “Anyway. Onwards; I should warn you there will be some tramping, and we may have to hide.”

The ship was led a merry dance, trying to get sufficiently close to the microrbital for long enough to get its avatar and the human off. Quickly getting the measure of each other, and each correctly guessing that its opposite number had no intention of being the first to open fire, neither ship resorted to serious targeting behaviour or the sort of hair-trigger weapon-readiness status that might have led to a misunderstanding. The whole tussle was conducted without signalling, as though neither vessel wanted to admit it was actually happening.

Eventually the Mistake Not … outwitted/out-field-managed the Gzilt ship and snapped the two humanoid figures off the habitat and back inside itself. It saw the Gzilt ship Displace/disloc one human-size entity off the little world a moment later. Having successfully retrieved its two primary Displace targets, the Mistake Not … tried to get a lock on the remains of the android Eglyle Parinherm, but found it had been beaten to it; a disloc field from the Gzilt ship was already starting to envelop the creature’s crushed and broken body at the bottom of the elevator shaft.

Before the Gzilt vessel could complete the operation, the Mistake Not … applied a spatter of plasma fire to various parts of the android’s body, cauterising all processing and memory/data storage nodes within the machine.

∞

xUe Mistake Not …

oGSV Contents May Differ