Amazingly, one of the juniors, who had either somehow survived the burst of rail-gun fire or had gone over the side during the attack, now yelled nearby as darkness seeped out of the sky. Before dawn, one of the mercenaries, perhaps out of boredom, finally shot a shell into him. Roach wished they would do the same to him.

Through a haze of pain, he tried to concentrate on what she was saying.

‘Now I want to be utterly sure of this. Think about it a little before you reply,’ said the woman he now knew was Rebecca Frisk.

He’d thought about it a little when she’d asked him the last time, and the time before - and on every occasion he’d told her the truth. She didn’t care about truth, though. She wasn’t doing this for truth. She was doing it because she liked to see suffering. Roach bit on his tongue as she played the laser, on wide beam, over his feet and legs. He’d screamed the third time she’d done this, in the hope that would satisfy her. But it hadn’t. She’d just go on until there was nothing left of him to scream. It was Frisk’s way, just as it was the way of her husband, or what was left of him.

‘Think carefully now,’ warned Frisk.

She seemed oblivious to everything else - had a crazy look in her eyes and jerky shudders running through her body with metronomic regularity. Roach did pretend to think carefully, while he listened to the low conversation going on behind her.

The mercenary woman was speaking to the Prador. ‘. . . time for this?’

‘Delay . . . Convocation . . . does not matter.’

‘Fucking lunatic’ That last came from the male mercenary. He seemed to find Frisk’s pursuits contemptible, but then his kind tortured people only for business, not for recreation.

‘Tell me again about Jay,’ demanded Frisk.

Roach leapt at the chance. At least while he was speaking, she wasn’t burning his legs.

‘Ambel . . . y’know, Balem Gosk, kept the head in a box in his cabin. I reckon Peck musta - aaaargh!’

‘Oh I know all about that. Tell me something new, something interesting.’

‘AG vehicle approaching.’

Roach could not identify from where that voice had come. The others were blanks, so perhaps it was their master speaking. He knew that this Prador on board wasn’t an adult. It still had all its legs.

‘Rebecca Frisk, we must return to our vessel,’ grated the translator box of the same Prador.

Roach prayed that this would mean the end.

Frisk stood up and confronted the Prador, angry that her little game had been interrupted.

‘I want to take him with me,’ she spat.

‘We do not have time. To the vessel - now.’