The attacker was a woman with severely cropped, red hair. Cronyl tried to rise, but she jerked down with a snarl and put a punch dagger through his spine. The deputy collapsed on his face, his body twitching, his last exhalation a long, slow, choking wheeze.

Voriet rolled, dragging out his Tronsvasse automatic. The woman kicked and deflected his aim. His shot went wide, the report echoing around in the darkness.

Voriet scrambled backwards on his rear, trying to re-aim. She lunged in and clamped his wrist with her left hand, twisting the pistol aside. He kicked out and took her legs away. She rolled as she fell, jerking his clamped wrist into over-rotation. Voriet gasped in pain. She locked her other hand around the bicep of his pinned arm and pivoted, hauling him head first over her and breaking his arm at the same time.

Voriet howled. The woman sprang up and stamped on his outstretched hand, breaking his fingers around the grip of the pistol. She kicked the gun clear of his useless hand.

He swung at her with his left fist, trying to ignore the overload of pain. She blocked the blow and drove a beak fist into his throat.

Voriet fell back, choking, eyes wide, unable to breathe, unable to rise.

The red-haired woman straddled his chest and stared down at him. She rested her beak fist against his brow.

‘Submit,’ she whispered, ‘and the remains of your life will have a purpose.’

Voriet couldn’t speak. He spat instead. Blood and spittle hit her cheek.

She hammer-tapped her beak fist against his forehead and bounced the back of his skull off the metal deck.

They followed the hallway to its far end. Nayl ignored other doors as they passed them. The sound was coming from up ahead.

As they approached, it grew louder. The constant background hum grew louder too. It wasn’t a moaning. It wasn’t someone in pain or distress. It sounded more like a voice unable to articulate. A voice that wanted to speak, and was trying to speak, but which had never learned any words.

Drusher thought of Macks, and the way she had been reduced to inarticulate gasps by the thing in the kitchen passage. Fear had done that to her. She had briefly been reduced to wordless terror by something that defied her mind’s ability to process it. But Germaine Macks was clever and sharp-witted, and she had a considerable and sometimes salty vocabulary.

This sound had a quite different quality. It was a human voice. It wasn’t groping in fear, trying to find some words, the way Macks had been. It was vocalising in despair trying to make words.

Drusher took a moment to steady himself. Just thinking about Macks had made him upset. He wondered where she was. He wondered if he would see her again. He imagined her, wherever she was, being as scared now as she had been in the passageway.