“Take him back up to the Necklace,” Bob snapped.

“Jesus Bob. What the hell is wrong with you?” asked Kev.

“I had five years. I’ve almost done it but time is running out fast. I don’t have room for niceties anymore. I don’t know what’s coming but the other-me was pretty clear I needed the Warpsite finished in that timeframe. And now what might have been my last chance to get the final materials I needed is running away. Bob out.”

Ryn nudged the man known as Fury with a toe and he groaned. Claire swatted at her leg.

“Leave him be. He’s powerless,” Claire muttered.

“So that was it? We just head back into space while Bob hunts down good people's pets?” asked Bad. The assault lighter was moving down over them. It landed nearby and the ramp extended from the rear.

“What else are we going to do? This world is dead and the Void didn’t have to lift a finger. Most of us live on Bob World now,” muttered Ryn as she hauled the wounded Captain up by his collar and marched towards the shuttle. While she had reservations about killing Sylvia’s tamed monsters she had long since lost all sympathy for the likes of Fury.

“You fucking slaves deserve what you get,” Fury muttered as he struggled to keep his feet under him rather than dangling from Ryn’s fist. “I can walk, bitch. I can’t run. Let me go!”

Ryn shoved him forwards and he stumbled to his knees. Bad and Sally had moved over to flank the man in case he tried anything. Collared he didn’t stand a chance but people were people and desperation could make them stupid. He climbed slowly back to his feet and glared at her.

“You could have offered me a ride off world a few years ago and avoided all this unpleasantness,” he muttered as he was escorted to the lighter. Twin columns of fire fell through the clouds, revealing themselves as bulkier versions of their own lighter as they settled in to land nearby amid plumes of smoke and dust.

Small spider-bots, Bob’s standard worker drones, spilled out and a handful of flying drones shot up to orbit above them. All the drones were crude looking. Made of mundane materials, only their most vital components used anything magitech. They were awkward and clumsy in comparison to the fighting machines Bob used to produce.

They began moving through the battlefield looking for corpses that could be refined into the valuable materials needed for the Warspite. A steady stream of bodies was lifted up and flowed back into the lighters. From the state of the battlefield it would take a few days to clean up all the parts Bob wanted. A few short minutes of combat had produced so much destruction, as it always did since the system.

“No offence but it’s hard to trust someone like you,” said Kev as he followed behind the collared man.

“Ha! Say’s a fucking minder. At least I can’t make a man kill himself,” barked Fury. “I-”

“But you did.” Kev cut in angrily. “You made people run into fights against their wills and get killed. The difference between me and you is I have some fucking self control,” Kev snarled.

“Easy mate,” said Bad as he cuffed Fury over the head, making him stumble. “Don’t let this prick get under your skin.”

“I’m not the villain here you idiots. I was just trying to survive. Who blew up the planet? It sure as shit wasn’t me or mine.”

“Belisarius was under the control of a psyker,” offered Claire. “He didn’t choose to do what he did either.”

“Oh so it was someone like your boss there who was responsible? Colour me fucking surprised,” Fury replied in a conversational tone. Ryn tensed, anticipating a move by the man. It wouldn’t do him any good but she’d known brighter people to try in this situation.

“What are you going to do with me anyway? Leave me collared and rotting in some cell on your fancy space station? What’s the point? Foods in short supply these days. Just end me and let me rest,” His shoulders sagged as he spoke.

“We need to get to Splinter,” Kev replied. He’d been diving through the man's memories as they walked and knew enough that Fury was certainly a victim of circumstance. He’d been a Line commander before Belisarius’ Revenge and had worked effectively with numerous teams to keep the wasps in check. Robbed of that he’d fallen into depression and wandered the world for a while.

When the bombs went off he’d been in a remote part of Siberia hunting down a rogue swarm that had escaped past the wall in the confusion of the destruction of the main queen. From there it had been a constant struggle for survival and food. He’d been too aggressive, too quickly and had been flagged as a Ravager Captain by Bob. Bob hadn’t been wrong. At that point the man was little better than a cannibal savage.

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Still, it hadn’t been a path Fury had chosen. It had been forced on him by circumstance and Kev had a shadowy feeling that if he had been in Fury’s shoes he would have turned out even worse.

“You missed that bitch? For fucks sake, I got taken down by amateurs,” Fury grumbled as he was led into the drop bay and secured to a chair, the metal bands snapping closed over his torso and limbs to hold him firmly in place.

“You don’t know anything about her do you? Beyond what everyone knows,” said Kev as he sat down opposite and stared Fury in the eyes. The man was of average height, any muscle mass he might once have had was faded and shrivelled through long periods of hunger. Fury was a husk of a man.

“I never even knew if I was talking to the real her. We aren’t a close knit group, believe it or not,” he muttered as he tested the limits of his restraints and found that while they weren’t cutting off any circulation they didn’t allow him any real freedom of movement.

The hatch whined closed behind them and the lighter shook slightly.

“Going for a gentle return to spare the grav plates. Settle in for a bit,” came Bob’s voice over the comms.

“Ah great, the slow boat home,” said Simon. “At least I’m spared an hour or two’s transmutation duties!”

“You’re still useful up there, we’re just more mouths to feed!” said Jane. “All I do is burn stuff if I’m not careful. It’s like walking on eggshells all the bloody time.”

“What are we going to do about Splinter?” asked Ryn. “She’s the last of the Captains.” Fury snorted a laugh.

“Last of them is she?” he snarked. Ryn ignored their captive and looked to Kev.

“We’re passing south over the fight and I can still reach everyone down there. Sylvia was… desperate. Since we stopped dropping supplies their numbers had dwindled. It was our fault,” Kev said softly.

“We had no choice. There’s the Dragon and the Shelly’s to feed as well as tens of millions of people on Bob World,” said Bob. His earlier anger had faded and the regret was clear in his tone.

“No choice? That’s my excuse as well,” chuckled Fury. “What next, you had to cut us off and leave us to eat each other?”

“You were too dangerous,” Bob replied flatly.

Ryn tuned out the argument as everyone began to chime in with their own takes. She pulled up the forward view from the lighter and enjoyed the sight. A vast construct of gleaming metal stretched across the world like a rainbow, disappearing behind the curve of the planet in both directions. It was hard to see the ruin that had been made of Earth from this angle.

Tiny lights and patches of darkness that occluded the stars behind them signified the presence of tugs and drones going about their work. Behind it all sat the bronze nub of the Warspite, nose pointed out into space and surrounded by a halo of bots frantically cutting and welding to complete the outer hull before the deadline her dad had imposed on Bob.

The ship was vast, nearly a hundred kilometres from nose to tail, and Ryn still had no idea how it was supposed to move. Bob had been very hush hush about the propulsion system and not even Simon knew how it was meant to work despite having crafted a lot of the parts and materials.

Ryn no longer missed her family, not really. They were a fond memory from a time before the real world emerged. Her memories of abundance, food and drink and anything she had wanted seemed like a different life. Since the Revenge she’d grown used to living on less, having almost no luxuries and living on the edge of survival.

When she thought of her parents and sister her imagination was coloured by envy. She was sure they weren’t scraping by while every resource was poured into some inexplicable dream like the Warspite.

She focused on the image in front of her eyes. The swarms of tugs and drones were scattering, pulling away from the Warspite on tongues of actinic fire as they shot back towards the Necklace. Even the usual repair bots on the vast space station were jetting towards their bays.

Another bronze blob appeared out beyond the Warspite. It was a gigantic cylinder of metal covered with protuberances and shadowy recesses. The sunlight glinted along its length and while perspective was incredibly difficult in the vacuum Ryn would swear it dwarfed the gargantuan Warspite, being at least twice as long.

She manipulated the view carefully, it seemed Bob was no longer offering any assistance to stabilise the cameras and the image had become shaky and blurry. Beyond the first behemoth another appeared, then another. Soon the sky was clouded with impossible bronze and golden ships. Dozens, hundreds of them swarmed in the skies above earth.

Moments later black ships of a more organic design began to appear. They arrived in the gaps between the gold ships, blocking the stars behind them and only partially visible as the light caught on edges and structures protruding from their ovoid hulls.

“This is going to get rough. I’m not sparing the horses anymore,” Bob declared.

“What the hell is that Bob?” Ryn gasped. Beams of black and gold light lanced out to strike the Warspite but were turned aside by the ships shields.

“Your bloody dad got back early,” snapped Bob.

Nine motes of purple light skipped across the void like stones over a still pond. Appearing in one place and then teleporting closer to the invading armada. When they reached the first of the black and gold ships they vanished, presumably inside them. A heartbeat later those vessels burst apart, scattering tiny lifeboats like dandelions in the wind. The life boats curved round and shot towards the Warspite. Not life boats then, Ryn thought.

A wash of purple light swept out from the prow of the Warspite and the missiles or small ships were gone. The first voidliner to arrive had slipped into a holding pattern to shield the Warspite with its bulk. Flashes of pink and purple energy washed out from it as beams or projectiles from the invaders tried to lance into it.

The purple motes were back, skipping to the next group of ships. They vanished inside them and soon those vessels exploded. The dark ships launched clouds of tiny ships, like a mushroom dropping spores, that swarmed down towards the planet. The Warspite and the friendly vessel burned a lot of them down but there were millions of spots of shadow that slipped past and fell into the atmosphere of Earth leaving bright trails of fire as they burned into the atmosphere.

“Sorry it’s been so long, love. Let's get you lot back to the Warspite. Cool name by the way, Bob,” said John as he appeared in the assault lighter. There was a wave of pink light that ran down the ship and they were suddenly stationary, all the G forces and shaking gone. Ryn stared in shock at the bright purple flames that filled her dad’s empty eye sockets.