Electric squalls battered at the shields. Gravity fluctuations made the Hrafnkel yaw and dive. The ride was bumpier than an ice-rigged wolf ship riding over rocky beaches. They were deep in the straits now. The twin suns framed the edges of the oculus with their round bellies, the Hrafnkel so close to them that the internal temperature of the ship soared, and the gaseous fringes of the suns' photospheres writhed behind the darkened armourglass. Grimnr spat on the floor to ward off maleficarum. He was not the only one.

'It is a vision of Hel,' he said. 'They are souls burning in torment.' A hundred and forty years Blackblood had sailed Uppland and been party to all the wonders of Imperial science. Superstition died hard.

The fleet drove on, accelerating all the while. The suns pressed in, threatening to slam together and crush the ship. On the far side of the straits the cool safety of the void beckoned.

'We're nearly through!' shouted an exuberant brother. The Long Fangs among the pack voiced disapproval.

'You will bring misfortune on us!' chided one.

'Never count on land before it is beneath your feet,' agreed Russ.

The brother was chastened.

'Too late,' said Grimnr. He made a warding eye on his forehead, curving forefinger and thumb into an oval. 'Wyrd has been challenged by his unwise words, and fate never backs down.'

Klaxons sang out distress. Instruments all over the ship turned red, deepening the rubicund twilight of the stars shining through the darkened oculus.

'Solar flare!' one of the kaerls at the auspectorium screamed. They felt it before they saw it, a great push of power licking out from Trisolian 2a. The vox crackled louder, bombarded by a particle sleet a trillion strong.

Before the oculus' dimming properties reacted, the light in the bridge grew brighter. The flare passed close to the Hrafnkel's prow, like a fem or a whip slowly uncoiling. Its position and speed were illusory. It was a million kilometres ahead, it moved a hundred thousand kilometres a second. It was so enormous it warped perception. 'Brace for impact!' roared Grimnr.

A fractal hand of starlight swatted at the void ships as if they were flies.

Now the fleet took injury. A miscalculation saw a squadron of torpedo boats veer from the solar flare too steeply. Their trajectory put them hard into the fronds of its trailing side. Two were consumed instantly, their shields overloaded and hulls stripped back to the frame by roiling, multicoloured plasmas. The third was wracked by the flare's electromagnetic fields. Its light went out, its engines guttered to nothing, and it tumbled, powerless, towards the outer layers of the nearest star.

Russ' kaerls moved to save it. They sent messages that could not reach it. They hailed ships that could not catch it. They looked at their lord expectantly, willing him to find a way.