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me.”
    “You stupid Bundaberg-swilling galah” he said quietly, as he reached for the over-ride. “I don’t really care if I have to kill you first, but we are going to eighty percent!”
    It was Vin Baker’s turn to blink behind his smeared glasses, he had not expected to be insulted in the colloquial. He dropped the heavy steel handle to the deck. It fell with a clang.
    “I don’t need it,” he announced, and tucked his spectacles into his back pocket and hoisted his trousers with both elbows. “It will be more fun to take you to pieces by hand.”
    It was only then that Nick realized how tall the engineer was. His arms were ridged with the lean wiry taut muscle of hard physical labour. His fists, as he balled them, were lumpy with scar tissue across the knuckles and the size of a pair of nine-pound hammers. He went down into a fighter’s crouch, and rode the plunging deck with an easy flexing of the long powerful legs.
    As Nicholas touched the chrome over-ride handle, the first punch came from the level of Baker’s knees, but it came so fast that Nick only just had time to sway away from it. It whistled up past his jaw and scraped the skin from the outside corner of his eye, but he counter-punched instinctively, swaying back and slamming it in under the armpit, feeling the blow land so solidly that his teeth jarred in his own head. The chief’s breath hissed, but he swung left-handed and a bony fist crushed the pad of muscle on the point of Nick’s shoulder, bounced off and caught him high on the temple.
    Even though it was a glancing blow, it felt as though a door had slammed in Nick’s head, and resounding darkness closed behind his eyes. He fell forward into a clinch to ride the darkness, grabbing the lean hard body and smothering it in a bear hug as he tried to clear the singing darkness in his head. He felt the Chief shift his weight, and was shocked at the power in that wiry frame, it took all his own strength to hold him. Suddenly and clearly he knew what was going to happen next. There were little white ridges of scar tissue half hidden by the widow’s peak of flopping sandy hair on the Chief’s forehead. Those scars from previous conflicts warned Nick.
    Vin Baker reared back, like a cobra flaring for the strike, and then flung his head forward; it was the classic butt aimed for Nick’s face and, had it landed squarely, it would have crushed in his nose and broken his teeth off level to the gums - but Nick anticipated, and dropped his own chin, tucking it down hard so that their foreheads met with a crack like a breaking oak branch. The impact broke Nick’s grip, and both of them reeled apart across the heaving deck, Vin Baker howling like a moon-sick dog and clutching his own head.
    “Fight fair, you Pommy bastard!” he howled in outrage, and he came up short against the steel cabinets that lined the far side of the control room. The astonished electrician dived for cover under the control console, scattering tools across the deck. Vin Baker lay for a moment gathering his lanky frame, and then, as Warlock swung hard over, rolling viciously in the cross sea, he used her momentum to hurl himself down the steeply tilting deck, dropping his head again like a battering ram to crush in Nick’s ribs as he charged.
    Nick turned like a cattle man working an unruly steer. He whipped one arm round Vin Baker’s neck and ran with him, holding his head down and building up speed across the full length of the control room. They reached the armoured glass wall at the far end, and the top of Vin Baker’s head was the point of impact with the weight of both their bodies behind it.
     
     
     
     
    The Chief Engineer came round at the prick of the needle that Angel forced through the thick flap of open flesh on top of his head. He came round fighting drunkenly, but the cook held him down with one huge hairy arm. “Easy, love.” Angel pulled the needle through the torn red weeping scalp and tied the