For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Kazda sloped into the infirmary and gave Linden an apologetic look.

‘Aw, what now?’ the doctor complained as he put down the greasy-looking sausage roll he’d been about to bite into.

It occurred to him then that he hadn’t worked out a decent, coherent way to explain what had happened to him in the last few hours, so he stood for a while just staring at Linden, trying to think. Perhaps sensing this would take a while, Linden quickly scoffed the sausage roll and scrunched up the paper bag it had come in. He tossed it towards the waste recycler, though it bounced off and rolled across the floor to join a few brothers and sisters under one of the exam tables.

Kazda took a deep breath. ‘Someone just tried to kill me by depressurising a balcony in one of the White Dwarf cabins, and according to ANDI, the person who did it was never there anyway. Not picked up on any scans.’

‘Ah,’ said Linden.

‘Ah, that’s your learned conclusion?’

‘What do you want me to say?’ asked Linden. ‘That’s kind of a special sentence to kick off with.’

He jerked his head towards the exam table and Kazda dutifully lay down and let the medical scanner pass over him. For a moment, the only sounds were the humming of the machine and Linden belching, then the scanner stopped and with a loud exhalation, the doctor rose and dragged himself to the monitor.

‘Bugger all wrong with you,’ he pronounced.

‘Is that a technical medical term?’

‘What I mean is, there’s no problems with your brain, besides the obvious. Nothing to explain you seeing imaginary people. Though if you actually were in a decompressing area, you might have had a temporary lack of oxygen to the brain and that can sometimes spark off hallucinations. As well as death, most of the time.’

‘I spoke to her before the decompression started,’ Kazda pointed out.

‘Aye, well, there goes that theory then. Have you any history of mental illness in the family?’

‘Does taking a job here count?’

‘Aye, you’re no’ joking,’ said Linden. ‘Look, there’s nothing physical that’s caused it, and psychiatry isn’t my forte.’ The doctor’s expression, which until then had been a mixture of annoyance and boredom, became pinched and thoughtful. ‘You never… Back in your “If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you” days, you never came across anything, did anything that might’ve turned your brain to scrambled eggs?’

‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you,’ Kazda replied. ‘But no, I wasn’t involved in any drug trials or psy experiments or anything like that.’

‘What about…’ Linden gestured towards his own neck and Kazda automatically reached up to rub at the scar on the right-hand side above his carotid artery. For some reason that one had never healed as well as the others.

‘It’s been years,’ he said. ‘Surely if I was going to go funny, it would’ve happened by now?’

Linden shrugged. ‘But we’re talking an alien bug from a system nearly twenty thousand light years from our species’ home planet. God knows what that could do to you. I mean, Spider Boy was plugged into your nervous system and blood vessels, passing on any weirdo alien diseases or parasites it might have…’

‘Isn’t there a thing in medicine called “bedside manner”?’ Kazda asked, already feeling himself start to itch at the thought of Erlautzi germs coursing through his veins.

‘I started off as a field surgeon,’ said Linden bluntly. ‘I was trained that “bedside manner” meant saying, “Oh, you’re awake, sergeant. Brilliant. We’ve managed to find one of your legs but we’re still trying to chase down the giant ladybird that ran off wi’ the other one…” But seriously, might be worth asking his nibs down in Engineering if he knows anything, heard of anything before. I mean, they don’t take a human host these days unless they have to, right? Got to be a reason they go to all the bother of making themselves bodies.’

‘They’ve done it for hundreds of years,’ Kazda said. ‘A hive years ago wanted to try and rise above the sort of “parasite” existence and hunting humanoids to take as hosts so they could concentrate on science and culture…’

‘Bug culture,’ Linden scoffed.

Kazda chose to ignore that. There was no point trying to explain the amount of art and literature as well as scientific advances the Erlautzi had produced. Their species was millions of years old, a continual existence with no asteroid to whack the planet and instigate a regime change, and they had developed intelligence and reasoning at a very early point in that evolution. That, coupled with the gestalt mind each hive shared and the fact that knowledge passed genetically from one generation to the next via their queen made them probably one of the most advanced species in the Trinary if not the galaxy.

Not to humans, though. To humans, especially ones who’d fought in the current war or had loved ones on the Utopian front, they were just “bugs” or “spiders”. But Linden was right. It might be worth asking Eso about this. He already knew he had nanites in his bloodstream now, passed on by Eso while they were joined. But unless they’d gone wonky, they were supposed to keep his body repaired and healthy.

‘But I can’t see anything wrong with you,’ Linden said in conclusion, ‘besides the obvious, like I said, but I don’t do personality transplants.’

‘Funny,’ Kazda said. He left without looking back and made for Engineering.

When he arrived on the lower decks, he found Eso easily, spotting his white hair at the far end of the corridor near one of the cargo holds. He was leaning against the wall, watching something through the open door. Kazda slowed as he grew nearer, but Eso turned and nodded. Arms folded, he straightened as though his custom-made body ached all over. Kazda caught the slight scent of aniseed, which usually meant the Terazhdoi was irritable. Most people just assumed it was Eso’s cologne, he smelled of aniseed so often.

‘If you’re here to tell me about some disaster…’ Eso began.

‘Not disaster,’ Kazda replied. ‘Why, what’s up now?’

Eso sneered at the cargo hold door and shook his head. ‘My wings itch. Do humans ever get that?’

‘Itchy wings? No, can’t say as we do. Lack of wings might be a factor.’

 ‘What I mean is something your body knows is bad, but your brain hasn’t worked out what it is yet?’

‘I think it’s just called “having a bad feeling about things”. Sometimes the hair stands up at the back of your neck,’ Kazda told him.

‘What’s the use of that? At least itchy wings mean they’re ready if you need to fly. Humans are so…’

‘We’re not getting into this again,’ Kazda said. ‘I had enough of that when you were in my head.’

Eso glanced at the cargo hold door again then gave a conspiratorial gesture for Kazda to follow him. They went into the cavernous chamber and Eso strode right up to a crate on the left-hand side of the first aisle, a thing about the size of a module home back where Kazda had grown up on the outskirts of Nové Brno.

At first, Kazda couldn’t figure out what the interest was. It was just one of a hundred crates in the ship’s three holds, but Eso pointed with the toe of his boot at a puddle of something on the floor, a thick, translucent slime that had spilled out from beneath the crate’s access door.

‘So someone’s made a mess of the cargo hold,’ Kazda said. ‘That’s Vardan’s problem, surely, not the chief engineer’s?’

‘That’s the third time it’s leaked,’ Eso said. ‘And smell it.’

‘No thank you.’

Eso crouched beside the puddle. ‘Smell it. But don’t touch it. Whatever it is, it’s corrosive.’

Warily, Kazda leaned forward. There was an odd smell from the substance. Something leafy but also foul, like rotting cabbage and then rotting meat. It was annoyingly familiar, but he couldn’t connect a memory to it, just the knowledge that it should remind him of something. He supposed if he had wings, they’d be itching now.