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skilled enough to give my crew even the faintest chance of survival.’
    Each Empire’s navy has its own recruitment method. Some put notices in newspapers; others buy advertising space on local prostitutes; some put posters up in toilets and in alleys commonly used as toilets. In this Empire’s navy, at this time, it was tradition that the pilot of each ship be caught. It stood to reason that the harder a pilot was to catch at dock, the more fierce and able he would be at sea. If a pilot submitted, said: ‘Fine! You got me!’ he was hardly worth hiring. A good pilot knew how to play ‘hard to catch’. The best pilots in the Empire were almost impossible to catch, and this pilot, the Necronaut, was the toughest catch of all.
    The Procurement Agency, under Captain Nezquix, had set up successively more elaborate traps during the past ten days, each with a bounty hidden inside as bait, and on each occasion the Necronaut had simply taken the bounty and vanished. But today was different. Today Nezquix had pulled no punches. He had set up a sequence of traps so baroque, so stunningly complex, that no mortal human, surely, could escape them.
    ‘We have him covered from all angles,’ said Nezquix proudly. To the north, he explained, was a bordello whose saucy harlots would lure their quarry with the promise of lustful deeds taken from a list compiled by a naval psychiatrist who had been given access to a secret file on the Necronaut. The bordello was designed to seal at the push of a button when their target entered.
    To the south was a morphium den whose sofas were giant magnets.
    To the east was a simple pie and ale shop which hid an orchestra of traps. The Necronaut, it was said, loved pies. He loved them filled with fried crickets and liver. He was a traditionalist. They said a lot of things about the Necronaut. More legend surrounded him than any man, even Fabrigas. The Necronaut was six foot six if he was an inch, they said. His chest was fifty-nine inches, his arms were thirty inches at the bicep. The legend-tellers were unusually precise. He was the purest kind of mercenary. He was a former naval pilot, so his mods were state of the art: his performance had been enhanced by the very latest military–industrial technology. He possessed the sharpest mind of any pilot known, and a bravery which could be confused with insanity. He was possessed, some people said. He had piloted a crippled slave ship single-handed between the twin black holes at Dominatrus. He had escaped the ransom prison on the pirate world of Diebax. He wore size 12 boots.
    ‘So you see,’ concluded Nezquix, ‘it is all under control. To the west is another bordello, Harlots de la Mer. It is staffed by even saucier ladies. If he escapes our main traps we have an outer ring of supplementary traps: pits, nets, laser-guided tranquilliser darts, moreprostitutes. It is a ring of iron from which even he cannot escape. We have never failed to catch our pilot. Even a wizard like you couldn’t do b—’ He had not been allowed to finish his thought because Fabrigas had fixed the young captain with a look which made his larynx freeze over like a water pipe in winter.
    ‘I hope your confidence in yourself is repaid,’ said the old man.
    ‘It will be.’
    ‘We will be watching your progress from the tavern.’ Fabrigas took a silver case from his breast pocket and opened it. Balancing his wooden box on his arm, he took two plugs from the case and pushed them into his ears, then they left Captain Nezquix alone and entered the Bells.

TEN BELLS
    The Ten Bells was the most dismal and dangerous tavern in the most desperate sphere in the most awful corner of the Holy Neon Empire. Terrible things happened in the Bells, and the worst of all the things that happened there was singing. It was the singing of sailors and longshoremen, but these weren’t ordinary sailors, or the kind of longshoremen you might know. These were drunken, tone-deaf, infectious and