Dakota entered an airlock and shed all her clothes, placing them in a satchel before slinging it over her bare shoulders. Her filmsuit then emerged and coated her flesh. Once it had sealed her lungs, anus, vagina and nasal cavities, she began to run the depressurization cycle. A few moments later a deep silence fell, then the external door swung open to reveal the vast emptiness beyond the Hyperion’s hull.

Protective molecular niters formed themselves out of the filmsuit and coalesced over her irises, momentarily magnifying the distant bright mass of faraway Mesa Verde until surface details stood out in near-hallucinatory detail before they balanced out. The stars looked like a fine dusting of diamonds across the universe.

Dakota took a firm hold on an exterior rung and swung herself out and onto the surface of the hull itself. She pushed herself off, glimpsing the airlock door silently cycle shut once more. Floating free of the Hyperion, she began moving further and further away with every passing second.

When she was thirty or forty metres distant, Dakota reached inside her satchel and withdrew a kinetic pistol, taking care to wrap a thick cable that extruded from its grip around both of her wrists.

Ready, she informed Piri.

She then aimed the pistol towards the behemoth bulk of the frigate, both hands firm on its grip. Several seconds passed in silence.

‹On my count…› Piri began counting down from five. ‹Now.›

She squeezed the trigger. The pistol jerked in her grip, and bright flame jetted from its wide nozzle. Suddenly the Hyperion started to move away at an increasing rate.

OK. Did anybody pick that up?

‹Three automatic traffic sensors in orbit around Mesa Verde detected the flare.›

What about the Hyperion?

‹The Hyperion’s external sensors remained locked down and blind, as expected, at the time the pistol was fired. The ship’s main systems have so far failed to recognize any discrepancies. I am now thirty kilometres away and accelerating to match velocity. Estimated arrival is in approximately twelve minutes.›

What does the Hyperion think you are? Dakota queried.

‹An automated refuelling pod registered to Black Rock Ore. There is some risk in this strategy-›

I’m aware of that.

Dakota waited several long, tense minutes until she picked out a course-correction flare from the approaching Piri Reis, stars winking out of view as they were occluded by its dark bulk. Dakota herself was now some distance from the Hyperion, moving towards the rendezvous point with her old ship.

The Piri made its final velocity-matching corrections: now it was moving at exactly the same speed as the Hyperion, both craft thereby appearing stationary in relation to each other. Dakota then boosted herself over to the Piri’s airlock.

Information flowed in a cascade between Dakota and the two ships, the murmur of data transfer like a distant waterfall in her thoughts, but one where she could still pick out the sound of every droplet as it tumbled.

A fat chunk of her initial payment from the Freehold had gone into reacquiring the Piri from the salvage firm it had been sold to, and then paying the necessary bribes to make sure the transaction stayed off the official records. The counter-intelligence ordnance on board the Piri Reis being superior to the sum total carried by the Hyperion, the Piri Reis was to all intents and purposes invisible, slipping past the Freehold ship’s detection systems like an unseen wraith passing through a wall.

Dakota swam into the heart of the Piri Reis, the lights low and the air warm.

Take us in, Piri.

Heavy doors rumbled apart just fore of the Hyperion’s engines. The Piri Reis slipped through them like a minnow catching a ride in a whale’s belly.

From the inside, the cargo bay area formed a hexagonal tube extending almost a third of the way into the hull’s interior. Shield generators and massive docking frames of strengthened alloy were arrayed at regular spaces, half of them already occupied by equipment crates. The Piri Reis manoeuvred itself into an empty slot and field generators flickered on automatically, binding it against the cargo bay’s interior wall.

Dakota waited. She really expected alarms and flashing lights, but there was only empty silence.

Reactivating her filmsuit, she exited her ship again, and entered the depressurized space of the cargo bay. Her implants meanwhile twisted the data topography of the Hyperion’s surveillance systems into knots, rendering her undetectable to any cameras or detection systems. She next floated into an airlock, letting her filmsuit evaporate before unslinging the satchel and hurriedly pulling her clothes out of it, as soon as the airlock had repressurized.

A few moments later there was a ping, and a door swung open to reveal a corridor with signs pointing towards the engine maintenance systems. Inhaling deeply, she pulled her now empty satchel back over her shoulder and stepped out into the corridor.

Against all rationality, she’d almost convinced herself someone would be waiting for her there. Surely someone must have spotted her, and would have figured out what she was up to. Instead it looked like she was completely alone.

Dakota leant her forehead against the cool metal of the wall and forced herself to relax, taking slow, deep breaths. She started to laugh, but it came out more like a half-sob. She was clearly letting her worst fears get to her.

Eleven

Trans-Jovian Space

Gregor Arbenz studied the projection floating a few centimetres in front of his nose, but failed to make any sense of it whatsoever. Numbers and decimal points fluttered like brightly lit confetti in the air above the conference table. But the one thing he did understand -that the projection now ably demonstrated-was the degree of control that the machine-head had over their ship. For the Senator, it made for less than comfortable viewing.

He didn’t look up when both Kieran and Udo Mansell entered, moving towards seats at the far end of the table. Instead he continued to stare intently at the display, imagining he might come to a greater understanding of the Hyperion’s highly complex systems if he simply looked long enough.

But in truth, there were other things currently on his mind.

Udo, in his typical pig-headed and insolent way, swung his feet on to the table as he sat down. Really, if it were not for Kieran’s controlling influence, Arbenz would have found a way of losing Udo in some challenge years ago. The security man was unpredictable, volatile and prone to irrational tempers.