That meant something bad. "Hey!" he tried to shout. The word came out slurred and weak.

"He's awake." He recognized the voice behind the tense whisper. "Pardon us, Griffin, we're sacrificing the hem of your shirt to a better cause."

"Wha—" Admiral Farming's voice had been dry, almost raspy. But why was he of all people here? Hayden shook his head, which filled him with an awful vertigo and a pounding pain that radiated forward from behind his left ear. Don't throw up, he beseeched himself. Don't throw up. There's no gravity today.

The gray blurs became a bit clearer. He was curled in the fetal position in some cramped space defined by metal bars. There was no light source nearby, everything was shades of speckled gray with no color. Crammed into this unlikely place with him were three men and a boy. One of the men was Fanning. Another—he wasn't sure—might be Venera's manservant, Carrier.

Hayden's stomach did another flip, but not because of his own pain. The third man held Martor by a hand and a foot, stretching him out like a sheet about to be folded while Fanning tried to staunch a dark liquid welling from his flank. Martor's foot stuck out one side of the cage, his hand out the other.

"He's… stabbed?"

"Shot," muttered Fanning. "The bullet's still inside."

The sight had brought Hayden alert like a dash of cold water. "We need to dig it out," he said, focusing on making his uncooperative lips form the syllables.

"Really?" Yes, that was Carrier all right, his tone dripping sarcasm. "Keep your voice down," he added in a hiss.

Hayden wanted to ask why they were in this cage, but didn't want to hear any of the possible answers. The strange electric silence of the ship, the way these men flinched any time there was a noise in the distance… But overriding that curiosity was the need to know that Martor would be all right.

"Cut the man some slack," Fanning said quietly to Carrier. "He's concussed." He turned to Hayden. "The problem is that I can't reach the bullet with my fingers. And the only other thing we have is a couple of splinters of wood I pried off the hull." He held up two sharp spikes of wood. "If I go noodling around in your friend's abdomen with these, I'm going to puncture something for sure, and probably leave some splinters behind. That's bound to fester."

"Maybe you can help," said the man who was holding Martor like a sheet. Hayden recognized him as one of Fanning's staff. "We could heat the wood to sterilize it—without setting it on fire, of course. If we could reach that." He pointed.

Now Hayden realized where they were: crammed into the framework of a rocket rack, somewhere near the stern of the ship. The rack was mounted to the hull and surrounded by boxes that blocked the light. But where the staffer pointed, the corner of one crate was brightly silhouetted. Just around that corner was a lantern. Hayden held out his hand and felt the faint movement of air coming from its wind-up fan.

A cough sounded nearby and gruff voices spoke. The men in the cage froze, only their eyes darting in the direction of the sound. Seconds ticked by, and eventually they all sighed as one and relaxed from their positions.

"None of us can reach that lantern," said Fanning, as if nothing had happened. "But you're young and lanky. Care to try? We need these splinters heated but not burned."

"Ah." He took them in one shaking hand. "Okay." Drops of Martor's blood were drifting past his nose, scented of iron. Hayden carefully ducked around them and pressed his shoulder to the bars of the cage. Once again in middistance he heard grating, accented voices: that was not the crew of the Rook. The pirates might see his hand groping around the corner of the crate—it was going to be brightly lit, after all—but he'd be damned if he was going to seize up like a busted engine every time one of them sneezed. He had to try his part to save Martor.

By straining until spots appeared in his eyes, he was able to get his hand around the corner of the crate. He knew the shape of the little lanterns intimately: they were like tiny bikes, open-ended cylinders with a wind-up fan at one end to move air past the lamp's wick. He pictured the device in his mind, and moved one of the splinters until he figured it was near the flame. He waited a moment, then brought it back.

The splinter was still cool. He tried again, shifting position slightly. Five tries and he put it right into the flame, making it catch light so that he had to quickly blow on it while Carrier cursed him for a fool. But he was getting the hang of it now.

A few minutes later he gingerly handed two hot lengths of wood to Fanning, who grunted in approval. Hayden felt proud of himself, happy for the implied praise, and then angry at himself for valuing Fanning's opinion.

Now that Fanning was at work, Hay den felt he could finally ask the questions that were burning in him. "Who shot him?" he asked Fanning's staff member. The man looked over Martor's arm at him with a bemused look on his face.

"We were going to ask you the same question," he said. "They threw you both in with us an hour after we lost the fight. I'd heard a shot… Were you outside the ship?"

Hayden nodded. "Clearing mines… Now I remember. He hit me on the head because I refused to return to fight. You'd… already lost."

"Wisdom is often rewarded with a blow to the head," said the other. "My name is Travis. This is Carrier. You probably know the—uh, Ensign Fanning, here." Travis smiled ruefully. "You have the privilege of being stuck in the cage reserved for troublemakers. Fanning and I were caught sneaking outside the ship. Carrier made it all the way into the bridge of the enemy ship and killed six people before they subdued him. And apparently, you two attacked a fully armed pirate ship with one bike and two pistols. We're a pretty worrisome lot, I guess."

"But we're alive," said Carrier in a flat voice. "Stupid of them."

"They don't know—" Fanning's voice was distracted "—which of us might be valuable."

"They don't know who he is," Travis whispered, jabbing a thumb at the admiral. "But they know there was an admiral on board. His ransom might be the only profit they see off his escapade."

"Thought I was him," said Carrier with the first trace of amusement he'd shown. "Why they didn't shoot me on the spot."

"Ah!" Fanning hunched over, gritting his teeth as he slowly inched his hands back. At last he drew a gleaming metal slug into the dim light. "That's it. Let's patch him up."

They'd each torn strips off their shirts. Hayden reached to hand some to Fanning, and his hand faltered. "Just a sec—" he said. Then the black wing descended again over everything.

"I'M NOT SURE that's such a good idea," said somebody. Hayden felt his body twitch once, then he was blinking around at a half-familiar vision of dimly lit bars and crowded bodies.

"Travis, I let you talk me out of surrendering myself when these criminals started torturing our men and now I feel ashamed of myself." Admiral Fanning sat on the air, knees up and his hands tightly gripping them. His breath misted in the cold air as he spoke.

Martor drifted, face pale and limbs akimbo, in the center of the cage.

"But it was to protect the details of the mission—"

"Hang the mission! These men are my responsibility. If I can spare just one of them the agonies we heard earlier, then I have to."

"Not if that ultimately kills them," murmured Carrier. "Quiet, someone's coming."

Hayden had been about to ask how Martor was. The sound of someone hand-skipping off the beams of the ship silenced him.

After a moment a lean, pale face appeared outside the cage. The pirate was young, almost grotesquely spindly, and dressed in layers of patched jackets, vests, and pantaloons. Keeping a safe distance, he shoved a couple of flasks in the general direction of the cage. "One's fer pissing, one's fer drinking," he said as they sailed over. "Don't get 'em mixed up."