Seconds later, Agansu heard a series of additional, dulled crackles sounding all around him, just as the next fusillade of fireworks detonated. He looked around and saw a couple more of what looked like media-cam platforms than had been there before. A few hazy disturbances in the air high over and ahead of the airship – easily missable by the normal human eye – were probably the marine arbites too, camouflaged.

He called up confirmation. Immediately, a picture began to build up inside his mind: a schematic of the Girdlecity around him, showing the tube that the airship Equatorial 353 moved through at its centre and all the structure around it, along with the positions of all the arbite marines popping into existence.

All that was missing from the picture was any sign of where his adversaries might be.

~Okay, Marshal Chekwri sent, ~I’m at a reception, with stuff that needs to be done. I’ll check in later. But let me know if anything dramatic happens, Captain, Colonel.

“You are fucking joking me. We’re where?”

“We’re in the stern ventral waste disposal semi-solids holding tank,” Berdle said through the suit. His voice in her ears sounded perfectly unconcerned. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see anything, basically, or touch anything solid.

Cossont was aware of floating in something thick and warm, in complete darkness at normal wavelengths. Her augmented eyes, working in unison with the combat suit’s sensors, were happy to relay the fact that the stuff she was surrounded by and floating within was just a little beneath normal Gzilt body core temperature.

“You have literally landed us in the fucking shit?” she said, trying not to sound panicked. Not being able to touch, see or really sense anything very much was, she told herself, worse than knowing what she was submerged within.

“It’s ideal,” Berdle told her. “This bit of the airship’s not shielded with 4D because, I imagine, it gets emptied rather than recycled. Very old-fashioned. Anyway, it means we were able to blat right in. Of course, it’s well sensored-up to look out for this sort of intrusion, but the clever bit was Displacing out an exactly similar volume just before dropping us in. Don’t think we troubled the header tank or the relief valves at all … or caused any blow-back anywhere for that matter. That might have been really messy.”

“Thank goodness for that. But, in other business, how the fuck do we get out?”

“Very easily.”

“Back to that later, but here’s another one; how the fuck do we get clean?”

“Also very easily. I’m switching you to sonar. Follow me. Swim.”

Cossont suddenly had a view to look at. It was like a drawing rather than a proper picture – everything was white, with fuzzy blue lines delineating edges and a sort of background green wash indicating surfaces.