'To what design was the patterner made? I've never heard of anything like it.'

'My own,' Cawl said defiantly.

Friedisch blinked at him. He lowered his gun to his side.

'Invention is against the lore for the likes of us.'

'Are you going to name me heretek?' said Cawl. 'I do not claim to be godly, Friedisch, but I am loyal to our deity.' He stowed his pistol in its holster. 'And I am going to save your life.'

'You killed her.'

'Do you think she was going to give us her barque if we asked nicely?' said Cawl. 'Now help me. Tez-Lar, roll her over.'

Tez-Lar stamped into the room and gripped the dead body of Aspertia. He heaved her upper torso onto its back; she flopped over like a dead fish, mechanical limbs clashing together.

'What are you doing?' said Friedisch. 'I don't like this, Belisarius.' He glanced out of the door nervously. The station had ceased shaking. The bombardment had stopped. That could only mean loyalist troops were on their way.

'We need her ship, so we need her, in a manner of speaking.' Cawl flipped aside the domina's robes, revealing the array of cylinders attached to her chest. Lights had come on the bases of all. A few were red, signifying the death of the contents. Most were green. Cycling lights ran around their midlines as cryogen cycles went into action to preserve the contents. He picked one of the green-lit flasks and unscrewed it from its ceramic mount. Milky liquid dribbled from the connector.

He wiped it away and took out a miniature suspension jar from under his robes with his free hand. He deposited the flask within the containment unit, and sealed the lid. Methalon gas swirled around the flask. He fiddled with the controls until the indicator lights blinked out an all clear. He breathed a sigh of relief, then he held up the unit to his face and regarded it avariciously.

'It's alive! Aspertia was right about one thing, Friedisch. Knowledge is holy, and she knew a lot, my friend. In here is a homunculus encoded with everything she ever learned. Centuries of data. Not all of it combat related, but a lot. She intended it to recreate her if she died, though I won't let that happen.'

'What are you going to do with it?'

'I can't let her knowledge die with her, that would be a sin. And if I assimilate this, I will be quite the general.'

'But how are you going to access it?' said Friedisch.

'How indeed?' said Cawl. 'Engrammitic exload? Neuronal scan?' He peered closely into the glass jar encasing Aspertia Sigma-Sigma's clone flask. 'I think perhaps there is a better way.'

'Cawl, what are you talking about?'