‘I didn’t mention anything about the Rock. How did you know?’

‘Apart from the fact you just told me? Come on. First, a terrorist attack on a major populated asteroid so spectacular the footage’ll be bouncing around the Consortium networks until kingdom come. Then, on top of all that, you appear out of nowhere begging for my help.’

Josef leaned forward and poured her a cup of coffee, stained pink to denote the form and quantity of legalized narcotics it contained. Dakota glanced behind him and saw, to her distaste, a Freehold challenge blade had been mounted on the wall near the door.

She responded with silence.

‘Dak, this isn’t a set-up. Alexander Bourdain is a snake, a piece of shit. The entire outer system would be a lot better off with him dead. And I know you, you’re no mass murderer.’

‘He’s still alive?’

‘So I hear,’ Josef replied, noting the frightened expression on her face. ‘He’s lying low right now, my guess being that he’s taking the opportunity to arrange a fast escape out of the home system in case he needs it. So what happened there?’

‘Someone blew up Bourdain’s Rock, and I was made to look responsible. But it wasn’t me.’

Josef blinked. ‘Seriously?’

‘My shipping agent-my previous shipping agent -fixed me up with a no-questions-asked delivery job to the Rock. It should have gone smoothly, but there were some unforeseen problems with the cargo.’

Josef was staring at her like he’d never set eyes on her before. ‘I guess we’re not talking about a shipment of toilet paper, then, are we?’

Dakota looked at him askance. He merely shrugged, and she continued. ‘My ship suffered major systems failures the whole way there, sometimes even total shutdown of life-support systems. All I could figure out was it had something to do with the cargo I was carrying to Bourdain, but it was part of the arrangement that I wasn’t allowed to even know what I was actually carrying.’

‘You must have been pretty desperate, taking on a job like that.’

Dakota shook her head. ‘Don’t even ask. Every time this disruption happened, the systems always came back online eventually. To cut a long story short, it turned out I was fetching Bourdain a GiantKiller.’

Josef’s eyes were just about popping out of his head by this point. ‘You’re shitting me,’ he said, after a moment. ‘A GiantKiller? Those things are supposed to be only a rumour. So they really exist? And that’s what ripped up Bourdain’s pride and joy?’

‘Yeah, but not before he grabbed me and started torturing me, since he seemed to think I’d sneaked a look at his cargo and figured out what it actually was.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Josef put up a hand. ‘So you didn’t know what you were delivering. But you just said it was a GiantKiller. Who told you that-Bourdain?’

‘No.’ Dakota thought fast for a moment, but a sense of self-preservation kept her from mentioning the Shoal-member. ‘I kind of read between the lines when something started eating the asteroid. I witnessed the whole thing, after the atmosphere gave out and I managed to escape. If it is a GiantKiller, your guess is as good as mine as to what made it go off.’

‘So, what, you think it self-activated? Or someone else set it off?’

‘Why not? Think how many enemies Bourdain must have. Think how much sense that would make. I deliver the GiantKiller, and somebody else detonates it. Who gets the blame? Me. When this all blows over-if it ever does-the first thing I’ll do is find the shipping agent who acted as the go-between in all this. That’s where I’ll get some answers, I’m sure of it.’

‘This shipping agent. Anyone I know?’

‘Constantin Quill, based in-’

‘I know of him. Or at least I do now. He’s dead.’

Dakota started. ‘He-?’

‘Don’t know the circumstances, but apparently what was left of him was pretty messy. Somebody put him in the same room as a couple of half-starved Mogs. That’s not official news, but you get to hear things on the grapevine.’

‘Great.’ Dakota lowered her gaze and sighed. She then accepted a glass of the pink coffee and tasted it, feeling a warming numbness slide down her throat and into her stomach. She began to relax despite herself. ‘Nice to know the kind of future I’ve got to look forward to myself, then.’

‘If Bourdain’s responsible for Quill’s murder, then it means he’s covering his tracks. Losing the Rock is a major blow for him, but if it gets found out he was involved in acquiring illegal alien technology like a GiantKiller…’

Josef let the words trail off and fixed her with an inquisitorial gaze. ‘Okay, now you get to tell me what you want from me.’

‘I know you don’t owe me anything.’

‘You get special dispensation. We had something going, the two of us, even if it was a long time ago.’

The coffee was making it harder for Dakota to stay focused. She put down the empty glass and pushed it away with unsteady fingers. ‘You were always particularly good with contacts.’

‘Rich family, generations of businessmen. It helps.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where do you want to go now, Dakota? Somewhere far away?’

‘The further the better. For a long, long time.’

Josef shook his head. ‘I’ll try, but it isn’t going to be easy.’

‘How so?’

‘You’re being blamed for the destruction of a minor world. A couple of thousand people are dead, and you’re the prime suspect for their mass murder. Worse, you’re a machine-head, directly implicated in the Port Gabriel massacre. How long was it before you got yourself black-market implants?’

‘Why do you care?’

‘Humour me.’

‘I survived OK for about six months after they let us all out of internment. Then they took away our Ghosts, and I wanted to die. I had new implants put in as soon as humanly possible. Pretty well immediately.’

‘How about countermeasures?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Sure you do.’ Josef chuckled. ‘I’m talking about methods to survive your implants being compromised.’

‘Everybody has their own way of dealing with that possibility.’

‘And what’s yours? Some means of wiping or disabling your own implants, maybe a coded message?’

‘That sounds like suicide.’

‘But better than the alternative, like losing your mind to outside control, don’t you think?’