‘It’s an intolerable idea,’ Gardner now raged. ‘There is absolutely no excuse for you to simply walk away!’

‘David-’

‘I am not going to be left on my own to deal with Kieran or his appalling brother,’ Gardner spat. ‘Why, Senator, are they even here?’

‘They’re here because I trust them,’ Arbenz replied just as heatedly.

Gardner laughed in disbelief. ‘Look me in the eye, Senator, and tell me how much you really want either Kieran or Udo making decisions over how we handle the derelict. As talking guard dogs they’re great, but do you seriously want to give them that much responsibility? Do you?’

Arbenz opened his mouth to reply, then seemed to think better of it. The other man’s argument had clearly hit home to some extent. He shook his head angrily and took a seat at the table across from Corso, without another word.

‘He’s far too much of a wild card to be left in charge of something this vital,’ Gardner added as he took his own seat, though sounding more even-tempered now he’d made his point. ‘Retrieving the derelict, winning your war-they’re the same thing, Senator. One secures you the other, and you’ll do much more good for the Freehold here than back on Redstone.’

Without being asked, Corso activated the holo display, bringing up an image of their destination. Planets and gas-giants hovered in the air above the table, woven together by bright lines of plotted trajectory.

At that moment Kieran entered the room, as ever the last to arrive. He took a seat at the table.

‘Base Camp on the moon Theona reports no new systems activity on board the derelict since we delineated the parameters of its defence grids,’ Kieran informed them without delay. ‘We were worried it might be transmitting some kind of distress signal after we screwed up getting on board the first time, but it looks like it was just a glitch in our own monitoring systems.’

‘Good.’ Gardner folded his arms, looking pleased. ‘The last thing we want is it broadcasting anything the Shoal can pick up.’

Arbenz nodded to Corso. ‘I believe we’ve been making good progress in reverse-engineering the derelict’s computer systems?’

‘Based on the available simulations, yes,’ Corso replied.

Gardner leaned forward. ‘Is the machine-head interface aboard the derelict ready?’

‘Pretty much, though I’m still running tests. But we can’t be sure how well it’s going to work until we actually plug Mala into it. The problem is that a large part of the simulation I’ve been working with is, by necessity, constructed mainly from best guesses. Until we actually get there, it’s all we’ve got.’

‘You understand, don’t you,’ Gardner pointed out, ‘that there’s absolutely no room for error.’

‘Look, we already know the derelict is extremely sophisticated when it comes to defending itself,’ Corso replied. ‘Two of the investigative teams you’ve already sent in vanished without a trace before you finally got even a part of it under control. But when we activate the real interface, I know for a fact we’re going to open up areas of the derelict a lot deeper than anything you’ve managed yet. And, yes, I feel pretty confident that what I’ve put together will work. But the fact remains, until we switch the chair on, with Mala sitting in it, whatever happens next is anybody’s guess.’

Corso chose his next words carefully. ‘Senator, I have a question, if I may speak freely?’

Arbenz nodded.

‘Assuming we’re successful in extracting a working star drive from the derelict… what happens next? What are the long-term plans, beyond winning the war against the Uchidans? Do we keep the technology, or share it with the Consortium?’

Arbenz grinned.

‘You have no right whatsoever to ask that question,’ Kieran interrupted flatly. ‘Your job is to-’

Arbenz gestured Kieran to silence and turned back to Corso. ‘Imagine the glorious future for the Freehold when it can go anywhere in the galaxy it chooses, Corso. We could conquer whole worlds, recruit vast armies to support our expansion. I see no reason why the Shoal wouldn’t eventually succumb before us, given time. The entire galaxy would fall before us. Picture it: a human hegemony, spread across the face of the Milky Way. A glorious, wonderful future for us all, if we only have the courage to seize the prize before us.’

Corso forced a smile and nodded with feigned approval, but his heart wasn’t in it. This was the same attitude that had confined the Freehold in a desolate corner of human space, the same attitude that was now losing them a war. He knew he didn’t have the courage to tell any of them what he really thought: that if the Consortium didn’t crush them once they knew what the Freehold had acquired-if they could extract the drive engines, if they could reproduce the technology, if, if- then the Shoal would certainly do the job instead.

‘That’s exactly what I was thinking,’ he lied.

Kieran changed the subject. ‘We have to discuss the machine-head pilot. I’m concerned about the degree of control we’ve already given her over the Hyperion. I’m far from comfortable about giving her even a fraction as much control over the derelict.’

‘You’ll recall the failsafes, Kieran.’

‘Senator,’ Kieran continued, ‘were you anywhere near Port Gabriel during the atrocities that occurred there?’

Arbenz raised an eyebrow, looking suddenly unhappy at Kieran’s new line of questioning. ‘No.’

‘Well, I was, and the machine-heads killed everyone they came into contact with. No-more than that: they tore them apart. They decorated the streets of the city with the corpses of women and children. They carved the Uchidan symbol of unity into the bodies of infants and then put them back in the arms of their dying parents.’

‘Whatever your point is,’ said the Senator, between gritted teeth, ‘hurry up and make it.’

‘I’m not convinced that Oorthaus won’t find some way to circumvent Corso’s failsafes. It’s easy to underestimate what any human being with Ghost implants can do.’

‘The machine-heads who took part in the massacre weren’t responsible for what they did, Kieran,’ Gardner pointed out. ‘It was a failure of the technology, not the people using it.’

‘Machine-heads are outlawed because they’re uniquely vulnerable to outside control,’ Kieran bristled. ‘We have no guarantees this woman isn’t really a Trojan horse under the control of our enemies!’

‘Kieran,’ Arbenz’s tone was rising, ‘right now, whether we like it or not, we need her, and our window of opportunity is narrow. Every one of our scientific advisers has agreed it will take a machine-head interface to control the derelict. We are therefore not going to discuss the pros and cons of this any further.’