Even at that distance, I felt her pain, and sensed that she had blacked out. They’d have her gutted before she could come round.

I knew I had no choice. I had to ware her. It wasn’t something she – or anyone else I knew – enjoyed, but it was necessary. Besides, we had trained for this. Kara Swole was a particularly receptive candidate.

The wraithbone pendant around her neck lit up with psychic energy. Kara’s body suddenly animated again, but it was me moving her. I had taken her physical form over, put it on like a suit of clothes.

Blank-eyed, Kara’s body twisted hard and broke the pinning hold. She tore clear, landed well, and swept out the legs of the hunter with the chainfist so he went over on his backside.

Then she turned, raising a forearm block against the other’s attack, following the block with two rapid jabs to his face and a side-stamp that caught and dislocated his right knee.

He howled in pain. Kara/I grabbed his flailing arms and swung him bodily around right into his partner, who was returning to the fight for the second time.

The partner’s forward-thrust chainfist, which had been sweeping at Kara/me met the ribs of his fellow hunter instead. The whirring bite-blades of the gauntlet weapon punched clean through the man’s side in a shocking welter of blood and torn tissue. He screamed as he died, his whole body quivering in time to the rending vibrations of the glove’s cycling blades.

His partner and accidental killer screamed too: in outrage and horror at what he had just done. He wrenched the glove out, but it was too late. His twin, a huge and awful excavation yawning in the side of his torso, stopped quivering, and dropped. A film of blood covered everything in a five-metre radius.

Berserk, the remaining hunter hurled himself at Kara/me. We leapt, boosted by a touch of telekinesis, and executed a perfect somersault over his head.

He swung around. But by then Kara/I had grabbed up her fallen riotgun. Her puppet hand racked the slide. A single, booming shot blew the hunter backwards eight metres.

We heard a sound behind us, and turned, bringing the pumpgun up. ‘Steady!’ Nayl warned.

‘What are you doing here?’ Kara/I demanded.

‘You were in trouble, Kara!’ he said. ‘I heard it over the vox. I came as fast as I could.’

‘What about the girl? What about the girl we’re looking for?’

Nayl shrugged. ‘Kara?’

‘No, it’s me, dammit!’ I said with Kara’s voice. ‘Catch her for Throne’s sake, I’m coming out.’

Nayl hurried forwards, and took Kara’s limp form into his arms as I ceased waring her. She was semiconscious, and the trauma of being a ware subject would leave her disorientated and sick for a good while.

+Guard her, Harlon. In fact, get her back to the transport.+