Nonetheless, it was beginning to feel as if a lengthening trail of death led straight towards her. First the massacre on the Rock, then Josef Marados, and now Severn. It was enough to make a person very scared -and very, very paranoid.

With a start, Dakota remembered Corso’s garbled suggestion that someone might have entered the Hyperion without any of them knowing. At first she’d considered such an idea to be ridiculous. There were few areas of the frigate that Dakota, via her Ghost circuits and Pot’s systems, hadn’t accessed or subjugated to her will in some way.

A few parts of the Hyperion remained effectively invisible to her, because Arbenz still retained sole control over certain higher-level systems. Was it possible someone else had found a way to get on board? Someone far sneakier and deadlier even than Moss: an intruder who could somehow avoid or alter the security logs, and then murder her in her sleep?

This ship had too many shadows for its own good. Dakota’s senses prickled apprehensively as she found her way through its musty, darkened corridors and drop shafts. She checked and rechecked the vessel’s security logs, including her own illegal alterations. There were, indeed, curious omissions or glitches that had nothing to do with her efforts, incredibly easy to miss if she hadn’t been looking for something just a little bit unusual.

She couldn’t dismiss either the possibility that someone-or something-had gained access to the logs without her knowledge. Dakota shivered at the thought.

But surely it simply wasn’t possible. Only another machine-head could possess that level of skill.

She thought often of some of the few words she had exchanged with Corso: his revelation that he was aboard the Hyperion only under severe duress. It revealed a streak of honesty in him-or so she believed-that made him substantially different from the others aboard.

Regardless of that, ever since their return from Ascension she had been avoiding him, afraid he might still betray her. He owed her absolutely nothing, after all.

Yet during his own subsequent interrogation by Kieran, he had clearly lied about what had happened in Severn’s bar. On the few occasions they crossed paths she had seen the sympathetic way he looked at her, those furtive glances when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.

It had been a long, long time since Dakota had felt comfortable with the thought of intimacy with another human being-long and lonely years with no one to trust. But a lifetime of betrayal didn’t lend itself to a sudden acquiescence to physical desire or momentary lust. So she kept to herself, and avoided Corso, making occasional trips back to the cargo bay and the Piri’s effigy, in order to assuage her tension via brief, erotic encounters, while always wary of the turmoil in her heart and in her mind.

Seventeen

Redstone Colony

Consortium Standard Date: 03.06.2538

Port Gabriel Incident -2 Hours

The Consortium task force tore through Redstone’s stratosphere on tails of bright plasma. The rising sun dazzled the powered dust-mote lenses that followed in their wake as they pumped terabytes of real-time visual data to Orbital Command as well as to the Circus Ring on the surface.

Severn was a distant presence, seventeen kilometres east of Dakota, as they rose over the limb of the horizon, a pinprick of nervous humour and black wit hovering among a legion of Ghost-boosted consciousnesses, each node in constant communication with all the rest.

What each of them sensed, Dakota also sensed. What each of them knew, Dakota knew immediately, according to a complex hierarchy known as a threat/ significance tree, almost without her being fully conscious of the process.

From moment to moment, Dakota was aware of…

… Alejandro Najario, running constant threat analyses from the command deck of the Winter’s Night, ignoring the bickering, and sly, bemused comments of the Freehold troops locked into their launch restraints in the rear of his dropship.

… Tessa Faust, another pilot, checking her screens and altering her delta vee. She was tired, her head sore from a bad headache she’d suffered the night before.

… Chris Severn, alert and sharp, constantly monitoring the transceiver relays that had been used to compromise the Uchidan early-warning system.

Severn had been right, of course, about her on-off relationship with Josef Marados. It hadn’t taken long before Josef had again zeroed in on Dakota, and she herself, of course, had been a willing collaborator in his seduction.

She could still smell the scent of his skin, in her thoughts, from last night. Her concern over Severn’s jealousy was offset by the knowledge of his own separate, developing relationship with Tessa Faust.

‘I noticed the Shoal-member in the Circus Ring,’ Dakota had muttered, lying naked under the bare arm Josef had cast over her. ‘What’s it here for?’

‘Privileged information,’ replied Josef, in a sleepy post-coital mumble.

‘Oh, bullshit.’ Dakota jabbed him with an elbow. Dawn light leaked through the blinds. ‘It’s here to watch from the sidelines, isn’t it? Isn’t it bad enough they started this whole business in the first place?’

Josef sighed and pulled himself around until he faced her. ‘What are you up to now, recruiting for the Uchidans?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, you know exactly what I mean.’

‘Dak, we all know about the Treaty Clause, but we still have a job to do.’

‘There’s something that really bothers me. It’s the names those things give themselves.’

‘The Shoal?’ Josef cast her an incredulous look. ‘They’re aliens, Dakota. That’s what aliens do: alien stuff. You’re on a fast ride to nowhere if you start trying to figure out how their minds work.’

‘I’m not so sure.’ Dakota pushed herself up on one elbow. Further sleep had suddenly become a distant prospect. ‘Understanding what they say is one thing, but sometimes… it’s like they’re having a massive joke at our expense. I couldn’t believe it when I heard what that thing calls itself.’

Josef shifted on to his back, and closed his eyes. At first Dakota thought he’d fallen asleep again, but after a moment he replied: ‘I’ll have to admit Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals isn’t a name that promotes much respect.’

‘But that’s just it,’ Dakota said, punching a pillow in exasperation. ‘They’re laughing at us. They don’t need us, but we need them really badly.’

‘OK, granted. But what can we do?’

Dakota made an exasperated sound and let her head fall back on the pillow. They were both staring up at the ceiling now.