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The music—if you wanted to call it that—was not made for human consumption. It had unparseable cultural contexts, frequencies and sonic components which made mammals feel uneasy, and rhythms which came from marine environments where nothing terrestrial had ever explored.

Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, it was very fashionable that year.

The rattling, humming, buzzling cacophony echoed around the cavernous interior of the shuttle bay. Bodies shook and twitched in time with the most percussive and penetrating elements, absorbing the psychic shock, muffling it, flooded by it.

It was not all they were flooded with. Fans blew a perfumed smoke into the room, clouds of vapour scattering lasers and narcotics with equal aplomb,

João’s hands were on her hips, fingers unconsciously clutching as the fumes seeped into his lungs, twisting his brain in the same sinuous wave she was surfing.

Someone screamed, but April didn’t really think about it.

She was too busy thinking about fingernails. They were strange things, fingernails. She lifted hers up, examining the casings that covered hers, protecting them from the vagaries of mining strikes. Her knuckles were a little swollen from the vibration of the drills and plasma guns she used to smelt asteroids.

Vibration.

The room was buzzing, humming, vibrating, out of time with the music.

It was unpleasant.

The screaming was getting worse, getting closer. Suddenly João was screaming too and his eyes were bleeding—pretty crimson tears running down his face.

She fell to the floor, breathing in the smoke which was pooling down there with the fish she was imagining. And the tentacles, so many tentacles.

A boot kicked her in the ribs, and she coughed, emptying her body of toxins and life-sustaining air.

Unkind hands turned her, rummaging through her pockets, patting her overalls for hidden seals. When they found what they were looking for, they patted her on the cheek, the way her father had when she had done a good job.

They took her pass.

She was Deputy Head of Security for the Roca Remolinos Station. The pass opened every door, unlocked every secure area, and released every docking clamp and algorithmically sealed piece of information.

The boot kicked her again, not unkindly, it was a boot with a job to do, attached to a leg with a job to do, attached to a person doing a job.

She looked up, saw a motley space-suit and a mantid-head helmet, gleaming green in the red and blue blaze of the rave’s lasers. She saw the tear in the station’s fabric, the chewing mouthpiece shape of the pirates’ ship.

Then she saw nothing. Nothing but blood and blackness.

Eventually help came. After the pirates were long gone.

There were seven dead from allergic reactions to the toxins, one who would likely have died anyway (the risks of alien substances being what they were), and a further thirteen murdered by the pirates for insufficiently rapid compliance with their demands. The infirmary was full of the wounded—so full that when April woke up she wasn’t staring into the cold white light of a medical facility but the warmer pallor of a hotel room.

“April, good to see you.”

She could see him, but only through a sanguine film. Her boss, Giovanni. Head of Security.

“I didn’t give them anything, boss, I didn’t —”

“I know, April, I know. We have security footage. And blood work. And the evidence of your body. No, no, don’t sit up, you’ve got a broken rib.”

That would explain the burning in her side. A gift from the pirates.

She lay, looking up at the ceiling, unnaturally red.

It hit her.

“There must have been someone inside, boss. The drugs, they weren’t the right ones. And they immobilised everyone before the breach.”

“Oh, April.”

He sounded sad. Disappointed even.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that.”

His big hand closed over her mouth and nose, the weight of it smothering her. He slapped her broken rib, taking all the fight out of her.

Blackness descended again.

This time it was terminal.