Corso shook his head. T don’t know what to say. I know I don’t have any choice but to believe what you’re telling me.’

She stared off into space, far away for a moment.

‘I’m not crazy, Corso. Trader might have control of the Theona derelict, but maybe there’s a way to persuade one of the other ones on Ikaria to take us out of this system.’

The surface of Theona was hazed by cloud, pale tendrils slowly wrapping themselves around the surface of the little world, spreading outwards from the gaping hole the derelict had blasted through kilometres of encompassing ice. Dark and silent, the Hyperion drifted far above.

The three ships comprising Bourdain’s fleet manoeuvred to come alongside the inactive vessel, while sporadic automated mayday alerts and warnings of cataclysmic life-support failure continued to broadcast from the Freehold craft. Warnings blasted out from Bourdain’s fleet that the Hyperion was about to be boarded.

There was no reply. Before he and the Senator had departed the bridge, Kieran had deliberately left several communications channels wide open that permitted those in charge of the invading fleet to access the bridge’s video feeds and witness the carnage within.

In the meantime, on the far side of the Hyperion from the nearest ship of the attacking fleet, there was a brief burst of energy as an emergency rescue pod, carrying two people, jetted away.

A few moments later, once the central ship of Bourdain’s fleet was within a thousand metres, the Hyperion’s engines blazed into unexpected life and it began to move. Slowly at first, but then faster, heading for an intercept with the fleet’s command ship.

At that same moment, the commander of Bourdain’s fleet picked up the Agartha on long-range telemetry, approaching from over the curve of Theona’s horizon.

Missiles raced away from the Agartha, closing in on the other two vessels in Bourdain’s fleet.

Twenty-eight

‘Something’s happening,’ remarked Dakota.

Corso peered over at a display of figures scrolling in tight columns as the Hyperion unexpectedly powered into life. They’d watched closely the destruction occurring on the surface of Theona, now barely more than a distant pinprick of light as they accelerated away. Dymas itself was beginning to dwindle as the Piri used up most of its remaining fuel to blast them halfway across the Nova Arctis system.

The images they were now watching were fed through a deep-space optical scanner system set up by the Freehold. It allowed them to watch the approach of the three unmarked vessels, as they carefully vectored in to match the Hyperion’s orbit and velocity.

‘Why aren’t they shooting?’ Corso wondered out loud.

‘Because there’s too much valuable information on board the Hyperion. At least, I reckon that’s what they’re assuming.’

‘I didn’t mean the other ships,’ said Corso. ‘I meant the Senator. He’s not the type to go down without a fight.’

‘Assuming he’s even still alive,’ Dakota replied dismissively.

‘You couldn’t kill him that easily. And look.’ He pointed at the screen, as the Piri’s detection systems kicked up and isolated the image of a tiny vehicle exiting the Hyperion.

‘Yeah, he’s up to something,’ Corso mused, leaning in closer.

The Hyperion had been programmed for a basic intercept course with the fleet’s command vessel. Under any other circumstances, the crew of the command vessel would simply have plotted a course that took them out of the ageing warship’s path. But that didn’t take the Agartha into account, preceded by three nuclear-tipped missiles.

Bourdain’s command vessel was now caught in a classic pincer movement. Its beam weapons swivelled in their ports and fired outwards, destroying each of the missiles in a flash of bright fire.

Too late: the command vessel’s crew had hesitated a moment too long. The Hyperion had ramped its engines to maximum acceleration-a far higher rate of gees than could have been possible if anyone on board had still been alive.

The command ship tried to boost itself out of the Hyperion’s path. And it almost made it.

The Hyperion surged forward, slamming into the command vessel, whose hull crumpled like paper under the impact, releasing puffs of atmosphere. To an outside observer, it would have appeared as if the two ships were actually melting into each other.

More missiles had been launched from the Agartha in the meantime, also targeted at the two subsidiary vessels. The command vessel’s fusion propulsion systems meantime exploded under the force of the Hyperion’s impact, releasing all their energy in one single, devastating blast.

Lines of light spread along the length of the Hyperion’s vast bulk, rapidly moving from fore to aft as the craft’s magnetic containment chambers ruptured, spilling raw plasma into space.

Corso chewed at his knuckles as he watched intently on the Piri Reis’s main screen. The destruction of the Hyperion and the largest vessel in the enemy fleet had caused an explosion bright enough to overwhelm the Piri’s filters for a few moments. He was forced to partly rely on numerical feeds and communications traffic analyses to give him a true picture of what had just happened.

The battle thereafter degenerated into a straightforward shooting match. The Agartha, was decelerating now, and one of the remaining two enemy ships was drifting lifeless, set into a slow spin by a missile strike. Judging by the way it had been ripped open, it was extremely unlikely that anyone on board had been left alive. The Hyperion and the command vessel had merged into a tangled, burning mass, twisting slowly as Theona’s gravity sucked them downwards.

Corso next turned his attention to their passage across the Nova Arctis system. The Piri was already moving at enormous speeds, its tiny mass, relative to ships like the Agartha, allowing it to zip between worlds at an almost uncanny pace. The danger of interference from any other ships that might be orbiting Newfall was nonexistent: at the moment, that planet was far on the other side of the system from them, putting any other Freehold vessels far out of reach.

The innermost world, Ikaria, was however a lot more reachable. It lay almost directly ahead, locked into a tight, Mercury-like orbit around its parent star, close enough that any atmosphere it might once have possessed had long since been burned away.