Dakota started to speak, but Udo shook his head slowly and she fell silent.

‘But not yet. For now I will say nothing. But one day I will meet you with equal arms, and I will kill you.’ He coughed with considerable effort. ‘We were attacked by Uchidan agents. That’s our story, do you understand? Betray me, and I betray you.’

Udo’s head slumped back, a long guttural sigh escaping from his throat as he passed out again.

‘You know,’ Dakota said to Corso a moment later, ‘he meant you as well. He’ll kill you if you talk about what you know.’

‘And what about you, Dakota? Would you kill me if I told Arbenz what really took place here?’

She looked away for a moment, caught in indecision.

The need once again to put her trust in someone reasserted itself. Just holding herself together like this -amid the ineffable loneliness and constant terror of her predicament-was pushing her to the edge of sanity.

Dead, Lucas Corso would be one less witness. The same went for Udo, now prone on the floor. But if she were the only survivor among these three, who would ever believe her story?

‘The man who tried to kill me is called Moss,’ she informed Corso.

He looked like he was waiting to hear more, but she was saved by the sound of voices shouting in the alley outside. Dakota grabbed Corso’s arm and started to tug him back towards the rear door leading into the anteroom. Perhaps they could find a way out through the rear of the building.

Corso followed her, apparently in too much of a daze to resist. ‘I don’t know if I can believe anything you say,’ he muttered.

‘I don’t know how much I can trust you either but, for what it’s worth, right now I’m probably a lot safer on board the Hyperion than anywhere else.’

There was a bright burst of light, and the entrance door blew inwards. Smoke started billowing and tall shapes entered the bar. Kieran Mansell stepped out of the smoke first, closely followed by armed men and women wearing Peralta’s colours.

He surveyed the destruction with a candid eye. ‘Somebody,’ he grated, ‘has one fuck of a lot of explaining to do.’

The post-mortem interrogations took the better part of two days.

Arbenz had meanwhile confined everyone to the Hyperion until the ‘nature of the threat’ could be assessed. Whatever presence the Consortium maintained on board the giant coreship remained noticeably quiet. But, from what Corso understood, the local Consortium officers were adept at turning a blind eye to any activities involving Peralta.

Contrary to his own orders, Arbenz subsequently himself spent a great deal of time away from the Hyperion. Nobody seemed in a hurry to tell Corso what was going on but, from what he gathered, the Senator was busy in some form of negotiations with Peralta, probably by way of damage limitation.

In the meantime Corso paced around inside his quarters, avoiding Arbenz’s cronies as far as humanly possible. He kept his thoughts from loneliness and frequent bouts of despair by diving deep into his research.

It was becoming clear that whoever or whatever the Magi had been, they’d been in contact with the Shoal for at least a couple of thousand years before their sudden disappearance. Contained within the codes recovered from the Magi derelict were tantalizing clues, random hints that might finally reveal where the strange craft had originated.

But so far, these were only hints-barely enough to let Corso make some tentative guesses.

He discovered that the derelict had, for some reason, been fleeing the Shoal when it had crash-landed on the icy moon of a gas-giant-where it had recently come to light. Had the Magi therefore been rivals to the Shoal, a star-faring race that also shared the secret of faster-than -light travel?

Anything seemed possible as he explored further, but all Corso really had so far was speculation.

‘My brother is under deep sedation,’ Kieran Mansell explained to Corso during a lengthy interrogation in private. Kieran paced constantly, hands folded behind his back, while Corso sat on a low chair that forced him to look up at his questioner. ‘He’ll probably remain in a medbox for a few weeks, as the damage to his nervous system is particularly severe. That means he may not regain full use of his faculties for some time, and he didn’t manage to say much before he went under sedation. But what he did have to say was… contradictory. For now, all we have to go on is the joint testimony supplied by you and the woman Mala Oorthaus.’

Corso had become aware that a large part of Arbenz’s current negotiations with Peralta were over the General’s refusal to allow him access to Severn’s surveillance records.

‘Remind me again why you decided to go to that particular establishment.’ Kieran hovered over Corso, violence implicit in his gaze.

‘I… told you, Mala led us to it. It was because she knew a machine-head she expected to be there.’

The disbelieving look Kieran gave him went on for ever. ‘Do you know how very easy it is to tell when someone is lying? My brother, my own brother, lied to me. He told me the man who attacked you was a Uchidan agent.’ Kieran pounded his chest with his fist as he yelled the words. ‘You know,’ he screamed, one gloved finger pointed at Corso cowering in his seat, ‘how important this expedition is to us all. Just one deception could bring all this crashing down.’

Kieran paused and stared at him like he was looking for confirmation.

‘If Udo said he was a Uchidan agent… then I guess maybe he was,’ Corso stuttered.

Face turning red, Kieran took a few steps forward and kicked Corso’s chair over, sending the younger man sprawling. Corso yelled as he hit the floor and put up his hands to protect himself. Mansell stood over him, fists knotted, nostrils flaring. Then he seemed to get a hold on himself and righted the chair, before walking to the far end of the room. Arms folded, he stood staring at the wall as if answers might spontaneously materialize out of its smooth grey surface.

‘Whoever the attacker in that bar turns out to be, it appears his boarding of this coreship was effectively invisible-which implies very powerful contacts. But this… incident has already attracted us too much attention. We’ve been noticed.’

‘What about Mala? What happens to her?’

‘I notice you’re on first-name terms now,’ Kieran sneered, glancing back over his shoulder. ‘What about her? She’s a means to an end, nothing more. But you have your own duty to the Freehold. And to your family.’

A means to an end. As Corso listened to the words he understood the greater meaning implicit in them. He himself was no more important than Mala was in the Senator’s grand plan to save the Freehold.