Orion-Perseus Arm/Milky Way 32,000 light-years from Galactic Core/2,375 light-years from nearest edge of Consortium space 0.15 GC Revs since Start of Hostilities (approx. 15,235 years [Terran]) Consortium Standard Year: 2542 Inside a Shoal reconnaissance corvette, lost and hunted through a dense tangle of stars and hydrogen clouds a thousand light-years wide, a Bandati spy was being tortured by having his wings pulled off one by one.

In order to accommodate the prisoner, who was an air-breather, the bare steel vault of the corvette's interrogation chamber had been drained of its liquid atmosphere. Misted brine formed heavy, wobbling droplets in the oxygen/nitrogen mix that had replaced it, floating in the zero gee like tiny watery lenses.

The Bandati had been pinned to an upright panel placed in the centre of the chamber, where the floor dipped to form a shallow, stepped well. The Shoal-member known as Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals noted the enormous iron spike that had been driven through the creature's lower chest in such a way that he was held immobile without, to his surprise, immediately threatening his continued survival. Nonetheless, it was not difficult to discern from the Bandati's ceaseless struggling that he was in some considerable distress.

A sound like a hammer hitting metal set the bulkheads shaking briefly, announcing the successful circumvention of the corvette's shield defences by an enemy attack drone. Trader listened to the damage reports as they flooded in through a private data-feed, but nothing essential had been hit. Yet.

Cables had been fastened to the chamber wall directly above the scout's head, and hooks attached to the opposite ends of these cables had been inserted into the outermost edges of his five remaining wings. The tension in these cables pulled the wings wide, as if the Bandati were frozen in the act of gliding through the dense atmosphere of the world on which his kind had originated. Trader was reminded of a display he had once seen of small winged invertebrates, row after row of dried husks pinned to a wall, carefully mounted, labelled and categorized.