The zero-point energy/brane edging component seemed be handling the 4D shielding well; much less blow-back than it had been led to expect from the simulations. The Mistake Not … was growing more confident using the weapon. This time it cut twenty metres off the stern of the crippled airship and held the resulting hull section in a maniple field, lowering the conic section to the soaking, pooled floor of the tunnel, trying to avoid laying it on any of the bodies.

Finally.

It was past the shielding. It could see into the interior of the airship. It could already tell there were a lot more dead and dying bodies inside, though no more annoying drone military.

~Berdle? Anybody? it asked.

Ximenyr’s suite or not, the man himself wasn’t there.

“No persons present,” the suit told her.

She looked around. Some sort of sitting or reception room. The place looked banal, in a spacious, luxurious, understated sort of way. Quite different from the sumptuous, over-dressed surroundings she and Berdle had found The Master of the Revels in the last time they’d been in the airship.

“What about that … chest, thing, Berdle mentioned?” she asked.

She moved towards another set of double doors. The lights flickered in the suite, seeming almost to fail, then recovering.

“Item fitting description in adjacent cabin, facing,” the suit said helpfully just before it opened the doors for her.

Still nobody about. One giant octagonal bed; many curtained alcoves, some holding items of furniture. In one stood the big upright chest Berdle had talked about earlier.

It was about as tall as she was and maybe a metre wide and deep when closed. It had a small wheel at each corner and stood hinged open to about ninety degrees. Clothes on a rail filled most of one side; the other side was all drawers.

She opened the top drawer, going up on tiptoe to see inside. The little cylinder lay on a piece of soft, folded material along with the rest of the bits and pieces that had been on the necklace they’d seen ten days earlier.

She stared at it, picked it up.

Behind their little window of thick crystal, the pair of sea-green orbs that had looked like berries seemed to stare back at her.

“Anomalous pres—” the suit began.

Then two things happened.

She was struck – kicked, it felt like – in the back, very hard, though somehow she and the suit managed to stay standing. At the same time something burst brightly, pink and white, off the drawer-front immediately before her, about level with the middle of her chest.

She was still thinking about turning round, wondering what had happened, when she realised that whatever light had burst against the drawer-front must have come straight through her to get there.

Smoke drifted up from the exit wound in her chest. She could smell roasted meat over the cold, sharp sensation of the oxygen.