Dakota stood stock-still for a moment, her lips growing tight.

Piri Beta, can you please repeat your last message?

‹Order affirmed. ›

That’s not the wording you just used. Please repeat the statement precisely as stated, when I requested a transport shuttle to be prepped.

‹System logs show the response as “Order affirmed”. ›

Dakota shut down her Ghost link and thought hard, an icy sensation crawling around in her stomach.

The sense that something, somewhere, was very badly wrong crept into Dakota’s mind and settled there like a great, hungry spider.

‘Something wrong?’

Both Gardner and Arbenz were staring at her. ‘Moment’s break in telemetry,’ Dakota replied. ‘Probably a minor glitch, but I’ll look into it now. Oh, and the shuttle’s being prepped. We can board in a few minutes.’

‘Thank you, Mala,’ Arbenz replied, studying her carefully as if the deceit in her soul had suddenly been laid bare. Dakota turned on her heel and quit the bridge quickly.

She let out a rush of breath as soon as she was out of sight of the others, wrapping her hands tightly around her chest as if she’d caught a sudden chill. Something in the nuance of the words the copy of Piri’s intelligence had used, something in the unusual way they had been arranged reminded her… reminded her of that Shoal-member she had met on Bourdain’s Rock.

As she continued on down the corridor, most of her attention was focused on a ship-wide sweep for anything, anything, that might indicate a source for the earlier, unexplained glitches she had stumbled across in the Hyperion’s systems.

Everyone climbed on board the shuttle bar Udo, who was still enjoying an extended stay in his medbox. More often than not, Kieran could be found in the surgical unit, talking with his brother through the medbay’s commlink now the patient was conscious most of the time. His nervous system had been pretty badly fried during his encounter with Bourdain’s assassin, and micro-surgical units were still working on repairing damaged neural pathways and grafting new skin.

Kieran was quick to take the controls of the shuttle, glaring at Dakota as if she didn’t already know how little he trusted her. She wondered for the millionth time precisely what Udo might have told his brother during those long hours of sibling communication in the surgical unit.

Corso was the last to enter through the shuttle’s hatchway, before strapping himself into a restraint couch next to her own in the rear of the cockpit. Recently he’d been keeping his distance, casting her strange looks and avoiding anything more than the most cursory conversation. She’d tried to draw him out further, hoping he might finally tell her more, but it had only led to some awkward moments.

I’ve been on my own too long, she reflected. Trapped in a tiny ship on the outskirts of Sol space, with no one but her own Ghost for company, wasn’t the healthiest of lifestyles. Her time so far on board the Hyperion had been the longest she’d spent around other people since…

Dakota pushed the memory away. Instead she watched the Hyperion dwindling rapidly from view on a nearby screen, Theona’s curving horizon becoming increasingly visible as the shuttle’s nose dipped towards it. It wasn’t very long before Dakota felt the first faint tug of gravity.

Arbenz twisted his head around from within his own restraint webbing and caught Lucas’s eye. ‘Mr Corso. You’re the expert from here on in. Anything Miss Oorthaus needs to know, you have my permission to discuss it in explicit detail.’

He looked at Dakota next. ‘What we’re about to show you today is something remarkable, quite unprecedented in the history of the human race. The reason for our strict security measures till now will become quite clear.’ He made an attempt at smiling. ‘I’m afraid we’ve employed a degree of subterfuge in bringing you here, but I’m going to ask you not to be alarmed. Everything is going to become very clear, very soon.’ Here he inserted an artful pause that somehow suggested a degree of thoughtful vulnerability. ‘Frankly, we need your help.’

Arbenz faced forward again and began conversing with Gardner while Kieran piloted. From what she could hear, they were discussing the personnel already stationed on the moon below.

She turned to Corso. ‘Start talking. Now.’

He gave her a queasy smile and then avoided her gaze. ‘We’re going to be covering a lot of ground, so in all seriousness the best thing I can do is explain things as we go along. Just trust me when I tell you that you’re in absolutely no danger, OK?’

‘You told me once,’ she said in the lowest whisper she could manage, ‘that you found something.’

The shuttle bucked under them as it hit the top of the moon’s thin atmosphere. ‘That’s the last time you mention I said anything of the kind,’ he muttered. ‘What we found is a derelict starship. One that might have a functioning transluminal drive.’

Dakota stared at him, waiting for the punch line, but it didn’t come. A dizzy sensation scrambled her thoughts and she felt light and giddy, as if filled with air.

Theona had changed from a body floating in space to a landscape spread out below them, pale and featureless except for its jagged mountain ranges where an ancient meteor impact had forced part of the rocky core to emerge above the frozen waters. Their craft dropped rapidly towards the Freehold base at the foot of one of these ranges, superheated steam blasting up around them in scalding clouds as the shuttle settled into a docking cradle. There was a heavy, twisting lurch, followed by a rolling vibration that set Dakota’s teeth on edge as the engines went into their shut-down procedure.

A squall of voices came over the comms system. Kieran Mansell spoke sharply to someone for a moment, and then hit a switch, cutting the voices off. ‘They’re prepping the sub,’ he announced.

Corso was halfway out of his restraint webbing when Dakota reached out with one hand and gripped his forearm.

‘I want you to know that if anything happens to me once we’re off this shuttle, you’ll be the first to die.’

Corso pulled away from her grasp with some difficulty. ‘Fine. In the meantime, can we please get out of here?’

The Theona surface base was manned by a staff of just a dozen. Half of these were preparing to ride the shuttle back up into orbit, where they would board the Agartha, while a relief crew newly arrived from Newfall rode the shuttle back down again. The station’s cramped and tiny rooms and corridors were consequently busy as a beehive as people made last-minute preparations for their departure.