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taught stomach.
    ‘Th-that explains why you’re, oh-mmm, not bothered about…’ She drifted off as Ella found her clit.
    ‘I’m not so bothered anyway. I find differences fascinating and I love fucking.’
    ‘N-no kidding.’
    ~~~
    ‘Is there something around here I can actually help with?’ Aneka asked as the crew sat around the table in the mess eating breakfast. She had poured herself a cup of coffee, or what passed for coffee, before she remembered there was no point, or maybe her body was trying to insist on that fluid intake. She had tried it anyway. Her body was, it seemed, quite capable of eating and drinking, but she made a note that the coffee was not worth doing it for.
    Bashford looked up from his cereal bowl. ‘We want to take you over to the xinti ship. There are definitely some artefacts over there you can identify for us.’
    ‘And exposure to that environment may bring back some of your memories,’ Gilroy added.
    Aneka looked between them. ‘You discussed this last night after Ella dragged me off.’
    ‘Team decision,’ Drake supplied. ‘Ultimately they needed my permission since I’m in charge of safety on the ship. Bash and Monkey will be armed, just in case there is a problem.’
    ‘We would be anyway,’ Bashford said, softening the statement. ‘You never know what you’ll find on a ship like this.’
    Aneka nodded. ‘At least you won’t need to teach me how to use a vacuum suit.’
    ‘We will. You’re safe enough in a decompression accident, but we don’t think you’ll handle exposure to the environment out there for very long.’
    ‘The temperature outside is close to Absolute Zero,’ Monkey put in.
    ‘And you need to breathe,’ Ella added.
    A window appeared in Aneka’s vision field. Current oxygen reserve under normal conditions: 2:40 hours. ‘I need to breathe most of the time,’ Aneka said.
    ~~~
    The suit felt as tight as it looked and the helmet, a compact model with oxygen tanks and carbon dioxide scrubbers built in, was sort of claustrophobic. They had fabricated both specifically for her and she had been a little surprised at how easy it was to operate the equipment. The suit had been very easy to get into; it had not been close-fitting until she had sealed it, then it had tightened instantly, closing around her body to press firmly against her skin. The seal was some miraculous technology called setaestrip, a nanotech version of Velcro, as far as she could tell, but giving a seal so tight air did not escape. The same material, she now realised, closed her leotard. The helmet had locked on with a similar seal, and now she was standing in the Garnet Hyde’s airlock as the air was pumped out.
    Bashford, Monkey, and Ella were in the airlock with her. The EVA suits were as form-fitting as the ship-suits, but opaque, made from some form of close-weave ballistic cloth which covered over the ship-suit, providing additional support and protection. Basically, the suits were tight enough to maintain pressure on the body without having to hold an atmosphere of air. The helmets and gloves, and a backpack environmental system, completed the outfit, providing flexible vacuum protection, and also a fair degree of resilience to damage from other sources. Bashford had told Aneka that the suits could handle light weapons fire. Aneka could have wished for body armour that good in Iraq.
    The outer door opened and the team proceeded across to the derelict. The temporary air lock on the far side was still in place, but mainly to ensure nothing escaped from the ship by accident. There was also a high-tensile line strung between the two ships, and this was what they used to cross the gap. Bashford took the lead with Aneka behind him.
    ‘Once everyone’s inside we’ll seal the lock before we go deeper,’ Bashford said. His voice sounded to Aneka as though it was in her ears, but she was using the radio embedded somewhere in her chest. The radio system was rigged to pipe into her mind