The storm clipped us round the ear a couple of hours later. A long trailing scarf of bad weather that darkened the sky outside my porthole and caught the Haiduci’s Daughter broadside on. I was flat on my back in my bunk at the time, staring at the metal grey ceiling and giving myself a furious lecture on undesirable involvement. I heard the engine thrum kick up a notch and guessed Japaridze was pulling more buoyancy from the grav system. A couple of minutes later the narrow cabin space seemed to lurch sideways and on the table opposite a glass slid a couple of centimetres before the antispill surface gripped it in place. The water it held slopped alarmingly and splashed over the edge. I sighed and got off the bunk, bracing myself across the cabin and leaning down to peer out of the porthole. Sudden rain slapped the glass.

Somewhere in the freighter, an alarm went off.

I frowned. It seemed an extreme response to what wasn’t much more than some choppy water. I shouldered my way into a light jacket I’d bought from one of the freighter’s crew members, stowed Tebbit knife and Rapsodia beneath it and slipped out into the corridor.

Getting involved again, are we?

Hardly. If this tub is going to sink, I want advance warning.

I followed the alarms up to main deck level and out into the rain. A member of the crew passed me, hefting a clumsy long-barrelled blaster.

“ ‘s going on?” I asked her.

“Search me, sam.” She spared me a grim look, jerked her head aft. “Main board’s showing a breach in cargo. Maybe a ripwing trying to get in out of the storm. Maybe not.”

“You want a hand?”

She hesitated, suspicion swimming momentarily on her face, then made a decision. Maybe Japaridze had said something to her about me, maybe she just liked my recently acquired face. Or maybe she was just scared, and could use the company.

“Sure. Thanks.”

We worked our way back towards the cargo pods, and along one of the gantries, bracing ourselves each time the freighter rolled. Rain whipped in at odd, wind-driven angles. The alarm shrilled querulously over the weather. Ahead, in the sudden, sullen gloom of the squall, a row of red lights pulsed on and off along one section of the left-hand freight pod. Below the flashing alert signals, pale light showed from the edge of a cracked hatch. The crew-woman hissed and gestured with the blaster barrel.

“That’s it.” She started forward. “Someone’s in there.”

I shot her a glance. “Or something. Ripwings, right?”

“Yeah, but it takes a pretty sharp ripwing to figure out the buttons. Usually they’ll just short the system with a beakbutt and hope it lets them in. And I don’t smell anything burning.”