With a yell, she twisted the blade, pouring all her savagery and determination into the thought.

The Ibu-copy snarled as the knife turned, scraping against his clavicle. Laura jerked her ruined foot free of his grasp and tugged herself up through the hatch, with Ayanna helping heave her along. The pair of them tumbled into the silo compartment. Laura banged into one of the metal silo tubes, rebounded, and grabbed at the first handhold she could see, steadying herself. ‘Move!’ she bawled. And reached for another handhold.

Ayanna raced along the other side of the compartment, heading for the equipment lockers.

The Ibu-copy squirmed through the hatch, his collar still spitting out blue globules.

Laura was barely thinking. Survival instinct had cut in. She just had to get away. At the back of her gibbering mind was the notion of her and Ayanna barricading themselves inside the forward cabin. Nothing else mattered apart from getting some kind of secure reassuringly physical barrier between herself and the alien things.

She swept past the lockers and dived up the ladder to the service compartment, slapping the rungs as she went, adding speed and stability to her flight. For once she performed the manoeuvre with a decent amount of agility. Ayanna was right behind her.

A hysterical scream tore through the shuttle.

Laura turned in fright, and shock locked every muscle. Ayanna was halfway along the ladder. The Ibu-copy had caught up with her. One hand gripped her thigh, allowing him to bite her calf. Not some angry streetfight snapping of jaws. He had sunk his teeth in, penetrating the shipsuit fabric, and closed his jaw around the calf muscle. As Laura watched, his head wrenched back so he tore out a chunk of Ayanna’s flesh. He began chewing it.

Ayanna wailed in helpless dread. Blood was pumping fast out of her ragged wound, scarlet globules forming a sickly galaxy around her leg. The Ibu-thing lowered his head again and took another bite.

Laura threw up.

The Rojas-copy arrived at the ladder. He swarmed over Ayanna, opening his jaw wide. His strength tugged her arm away from the ladder, and forced her fingers into his mouth.

Ayanna’s screaming was deafening, blotting out the sound of her knuckles breaking as they were bitten through. Her mental voice was an incoherent yell of pain and utter horror. It was like an assault on Laura’s senses, battering her as violently as any physical blow. Yet still the survival instinct was strong enough to goad her into action. She grabbed her way along the service compartment floor and into the forward cabin, her own piteous wailing like a soprano whistle, tears wrecking her vision. Her hand thumped down on the hatch button. The malmetal closed.

ESP showed her a dozen conduits and power lines around the hatch. Her telekinesis reached out and clawed at every one of them, shredding the insulation and the conductors, ripping them apart. The lights went out. Alarms sounded as short circuits blew safety cutoffs. The background whining of several fans faded to silence. Red lights flared on the console.

Laura pushed herself away from the hatch. Ayanna’s screams had stopped before it was closed. Something hit the other side of the hatch. Another strike. Another and another. Then silence.

She curled up into a foetal ball and began sobbing.

*

It was a feeling that took a long time to register. Not a compulsion, but a sensation akin to recognizing a smell.

Laura blinked in confusion. It was her gaiamotes gently apprising her that someone was wanting to talk to her. Joey – that was the mental scent.

Very cautiously, Laura opened up the gaiamotes’ sensitivity.

‘Laura?’

‘Joey?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know if it’s really you. They . . . Oh, bollocks. This can’t be happening. They ate her, Joey. They ate her! And I left her behind.’ The shame was so overwhelming, she wanted to bodyloss – re-life herself free of all this. Vermillion would break out of the Void somehow, and everyone left behind would be re-lifed using memories in the starship’s secure store. Her life would go on without any memory of Shuttle Fourteen or the Forest. No knowledge of what Ayanna had endured.

‘It’s me, I swear it.’ The surge of emotion that slipped through the gaiafield connection from him was profound, and utterly sincere.

Laura started crying again. ‘Oh, Joey, Joey. What are they?’

‘I don’t know. Some kind of copies.’

‘Where are you? What happened?’

‘I’m still in the EVA hangar – look.’

When she closed her eyes and accepted his vision through the gaiafield, she saw the EVA hangar from an off-kilter angle. She/Joey was looking at it from the airlock end. The emergency blue lighting was on, and there was no sign of the alien human-copies.

‘They fastened me in place. But I did it, Laura. What I said – the same thing you did. While they were busy with Ayanna, I closed the hatch with telekinesis, then screwed up the power cables, shorted everything out. They can’t get to me.’

‘Can you move?’

A wash of stoic regret came through the connection. ‘No. My telekinesis isn’t strong enough to break the bond. It’s some kind of tough polymer wrapped round my wrists and ankles.’

‘Can you manipulate a tool? Cut through it?’

‘Laura, please. I’m not sure I’m that accurate. You have to get back here.’

An involuntary tremor ran the length of her body. She let out a pitiful squeak of fear. ‘No. No, I can’t.’

‘They will come for you. You know that. They will find tools. They will cut through the hatch.’

Just the thought of it made tears well up again. Without gravity, the liquid simply swelled up on her eyeballs, distorting her vision. ‘I left her, Joey,’ she confessed. ‘I just left her with them. I didn’t even try to help, I was too scared. How awful am I? She was all alone with them. And she died like that. She died alone, Joey, with those things eating her. Nothing could be worse than that. Nothing! Maybe I deserve them coming for me.’

‘Stop it. They’re strong – much stronger than us. You couldn’t have done anything. It would have happened to you, too.’

‘Have they . . . ? Did they . . . ? To you?’

‘No. I’m intact. I just can’t move, that’s all. Laura, you have to get down here. You won’t have much time.’

‘I can’t get through the hatch; I screwed it up pretty good. But even if I could get it open again, I wouldn’t ever get past them.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. Don’t even try to fight your way past them. You have to EVA.’

‘What?’

‘There are emergency suits in the forward cabin. Put one on and break the windscreen. I control the exopod airlock; my telekinesis can reach the control panel. I’ve already opened the outer hatch ready for you. I wouldn’t have suggested this otherwise. Check the network if you don’t believe me.’

It took a long time for Laura to make herself move. Her macrocellular clusters were still blocking the terrible pain from her ruined ankle. Exovision icons were flashing up constant warnings about tissue damage and internal bleeding, which she’d ignored along with everything else as she dropped into a dangerous denial state. She hauled herself along the couches to the curving console under the windscreen. There were several system schematics up and running. They confirmed it: the EVA hangar airlock’s outer door was open.

‘I see,’ Laura said.

‘Then come and collect me,’ Joey said. ‘We’ll fly the second exopod down to the planet and find Vermillion.’

Laura gave the windscreen a long look. The remaining hologram graphics blinking inside the glass were mostly warning symbols. ‘Joey, how the hell am I going to break the windscreen? It can withstand aerobrake entry into an atmosphere, and the shuttle is rated for gas giant work. The damn thing is tough – probably tougher than the rest of the fuselage.’