Jayne skidded to a halt as the small, sleek craft came in low over the house and began to descend onto the expanse of drive outside. He could feel the vibrations through his boots, then realised it wasn’t just the shuttle as dust and grit billowed from the windows as the south wing seemed to fold in on itself. “Shit.”

He started to run again, vaguely aware of the shuttle’s engines cycling back, but all his attention was on his target. The entire top two floors of the burnt-out wing had gone, collapsed into a pile of rubble that shifted as he scrambled over it and inside what was left.

A flash of red to his left had him half turning, his hand already drawing his gun, but it was Demelza, huddled against the wall on a thin strip of floor. “Stay put!” he yelled, putting up his hand. “Or you’ll go too!”

She tried to nod, then said, “They fell through. Into the cellar.” She coughed mightily, a cloud of dust flying from her hair.

“Figured that.”

“Jayne?” It was Dillon, peering in from outside.

“Don’t,” Jayne warned, feeling something slip under his boots. “It ain’t stable.”

“Where’s Hank?”

“Under it.” He grunted as he saw the thin, high-tensile rope he’d left from what seemed like a lifetime ago, still miraculously attached and disappearing through a gap in the floor, just big enough for a man. “Demelza needs help,” he added, moving as carefully but as quickly as he could. “Should be able to get her from the inside. And you’d better tell Simon to get his stuff ready.”

“Will do.”

The gap was tight, and he scraped his shoulders as he went through, but the rope allowed him to keep most of his weight off the pile of rubble until he stood on a relatively clear patch of the cellar floor and dragged the torch from his pocket.

“Hank! Hank, you dead yet?” He waited, listening carefully, but all he could hear was the faint slither of tiny fragments settling.

He opened his mouth to call again, but his ears caught a faint groan from somewhere to his right. Skirting the debris his