‘Have the batteries been taken out?’

‘No.’

Dido nodded. ‘What’s the plan?’

Minka didn’t know. She was just a lieutenant. ‘Not sure there is one yet. We got the vanguard of the Elnaurs in Tor Kharybdis. But their reserves are intact. Bendikt wants to offer himself as the bait. He’s going to personally lead the assault.’

‘It sounds desperate,’ Dido said.

‘He is desperate,’ Minka said. ‘There’s a war out there.’

Dido laughed. There was a bitter note to it. She had known only war. War was what she had been bred for; it was what she lived for.

And now she was medically unfit.

Minka filled her in on all the ideas, but she could tell that Dido hated hearing any of this second hand.

At the end Dido said, ‘I’m delighted for you, Minka.’ But her tone was flat. ‘Throne! I lie in bed. All I want is for the shrapnel to have gone an inch to the left, or a foot to the right. A little higher and it’d have gone straight through my heart, apparently. And I’d be dead and with the Emperor. A foot to the right and it’d have hit Barnabas instead. Why the hell did you bother saving me?’

Minka didn’t know how to answer.

‘You should have just left me there,’ Dido cursed. ‘I could have died. It’s better than this.’ Dido held up both hands.

Minka sat for a long time. ‘Sorry,’ she said at last.

They were silent for a while. There was a little forced small talk, then Minka said, ‘I’d better go.’

Dido watched Minka leave. The suppressants were still in her hand and she thought about taking them. But what was pain, she asked herself, for a warrior like her?

Medicae Banting finished his examination. ‘Good,’ he grunted and took scissors to cut the stitches. Using needle-nosed pliers, he tugged out the last stitches, then swabbed the raw pink flesh with counterseptics.

Commissar Knoll pulled his sleeve down.

‘It’s healing well,’ Banting said. ‘I’d recommend avoidance of strenuous actions with that arm. At least for a week or so. You don’t want it to reopen. And keep it dry.’

Knoll nodded. He fastened the button closed, flexed his fist. The wound was stiff, the skin felt strangely taut, but he did not notice any loss of movement.

‘Noted,’ he said. ‘Thank you, medicae.’

Minka retraced her steps through the medicae facility. At the end of the corridor she turned and saw a party of seven Drookians talking to a medic. She could have taken a side-corridor but she was damned if she was going to give way.

She strode forward. She was Cadian, and Cadians did not step back from any fight. One of the Drookians looked up. It was Captain Midha.

‘You!’ Minka shouted. ‘You abandoned your position on Tor Kharybdis!’

Midha grinned. ‘I followed my orders.’