OKAY NEXT ONE IS THE LAST ONE OGHFKHLSFJG

~

'—Drone! It was it that did it, the fire! Fuck! Shut it down, for Christ's sake! What are you doing? Who are you people?'

Lambert made it halfway through her introduction before the chief engineer noticed a suit he recognised. 'I thought everyone else was dead! Why didn't you . . . .' He stepped toward her, eyes narrowed. Orpicea wanted to melt into the wall. 'Who the hell are you?'

Wills perked up. A grin began to dawn on his face.

Pretending not to notice, Orpicea said: 'It's Sam. Remember?'

'Do I shit! You had surgery since the fire, Sam?'

Her eyes flicked to the drone, and it saw panic in them. A threat, too. 'I,' it spluttered, 'am shocked, chief engineer Pardoux! With your behaviour. Also disappointed—'

'That's rich! That's real goddamn rich.' He glared at the officers. Lambert glared back. Wills crossed his arms, his lips unsuccessfully restraining a smirk. 'This drone,' Pardoux spat, thrusting a finger, 'assaulted me! He locked me up with the ship's entire supply of suit rations and left me there! For all I know it set the fucking—'

'—It was for your own good, chief!' Orpicea blurted, beginning to feel like the suit she'd tossed out of the navigation compartment, except instead of a tether she had a skyjacking robot. She stepped between Pardoux and the officers. 'Wouldn't surprise me if this idiot was working with Orpicea! I mean, the captain, not me—'

'Are you listening to this drivel? Oh, go on,' he said, leaning over Orpicea's shoulder. 'Who am I working with, exactly? Where's the proof? Where's proof I did anything at all? I'm the goddamn victim here—'

The radio chimed. 'Excuse me,' the ship warbled cheerfully. 'Mr Pardoux is currently suspended from active duty due to an incident in which he expressed an intent to—' Pardoux's recorded voice cut in '—fuck cryo! . . . during a crisis scenario. Please return him to his quarters until he can be turned over to Hecate Cryogenics for debriefing.'

It took a moment for everyone's gaze to fall from the ceiling. Orpicea cleared her throat, sensing an opportunity.

'If you recall,' she said, triumphant, 'I said I was the only surviving crewmember.'

Wills raised a baffled eyebrow at his partner. Lambert scowled undirected fury. When her order came, it came squeezed through gritted teeth.

'Wills,' she said. 'Arrest everyone.'

'Sir?'

Lambert levelled her gun. 'Arrest everyone! I don't know what the f . . . what the heck is going on here, but one of you is guilty, probably all of you, and I swear to God I'm going to—don't move!'

Her palms shot up. 'Let's not—' She caught Lambert's eye. 'Listen. You're here for captain Orpicea. As far as I know,' said captain Orpicea, 'that's her corpse dangling out the navigation compartment—'

'Ma'am,' said Lambert. 'With respect, you are an honest-to-goodness moron. I have nothing but your word on any of this. Your ship, if it is your ship, is a burnt out derelict with a defective personality, tended by a scrapheap on legs—'

'Excuse me.'

'—and you, a woman who may or may not be a mass-murdering terrorist, whose escape pod, by the way, is sitting in the gosh-darned dock! I have news for you: you were going to be arrested on suspicion anyway. You're going to take us to navigation, we'll give that-all a look over, then we're going to impound this ship and route it back to Tynte for a full investigation. Someone is going to have to make sense of this clustermuck, and I'm glad it won't be me.'

As she spoke, the drone had enough time to blink the message:

T-H-I-S-I-S-A-L-L-Y-O-U-R-F-A-U-L-T, STOP

Rumbling forward, Wills tugged a pair of dark crescents from a pouch on his hip. Orpicea recognised them. Suit collars. 'Best keep things civilised, ladies and gents,' he said, grin gone, suddenly all business. 'Keep still now.'

'Wait,' said Pardoux. 'There's actually a captain Orpicea?'

Captain Orpicea shoved him. He crashed into Wills. Something flashed. She ducked on reflex and the bullet went ricocheting down the corridor. Any moment she expected another wink of fire and a terrible, blooming pain in her gut or her visor to splinter apart and the air to rush whistling out—

But Lambert adjusted her aim. 'Drone,' she said. 'Shut down. Invoking 33-A. Authorise against my suit key. Shut down.'

Considering this, the drone stopped advancing on her and in a tremulous and fading voice said: 'Oh dear.' It slumped. Its remaining eye went black, and it crumpled limp like a bag of scrap upturned and emptied over the floor.

Lambert jerked the gun back on Orpicea but by then she was already mid-leap. She slammed into the patrolwoman. They rolled. The gun scraped over the floor. A fist found her abdomen, but in the suit it was like being punched by a pillow and she jabbed at Lambert's visor lock. It held. With a cry of frustration Orpicea threw herself clear and clawed for the gun, closed her fingers around its grip, felt a hand clutch her ankle as she spun onto her shoulder and aimed and—

Kelly chimed. 'Hello,' said the ship. 'I can feel someone moving on my skin. I mean—there's unauthorised activity on the navigation compartment exterior. Hello? Who is that? Hello?'

Orpicea and Lambert locked eyes. What? they both thought.

Then the suit collar slid notched fingers around Orpicea's neck and with a crack her helmet knocked on the floor as her suit fell slack. She struggled. Her arms shifted feebly in their cushioned sleeves. Kicking the gun away, Wills hauled her up by the collar and thrust his visor against hers.

'What,' he panted, 'in living fuck is going on?'