All dead.

It hadn’t quite sunk in. He knew from past experience-from Cara’s death-just how long that could take.

He considered the possibility that, in a very real way, his life was over. He hadn’t missed the look on Dakota’s face when he’d departed her ship, but if he’d told her what was going through his mind, she might have tried to stop him.

Even worse, he might have let her stop him.

Disregarding some kind of coup, they were still under Senator Arbenz’s thrall so long as they remained within the Nova Arctis system. Yet the fact remained both Corso and Dakota were still essential to Arbenz’s plans.

There was a series of observation bubbles ringing the Hyperion’s hull, about halfway along its length. They were tiny clear blisters that looked out on the stars and Theona’s frozen surface far below. These bubbles were the only places aboard the frigate where you could look directly out at the universe beyond the hull and be absolutely, unwaveringly certain that what you were seeing was real, and not-assuming you were sufficiently paranoid to let it concern you-merely a deluge of false information fed through the ultimately fallible conduit of the Hyperion’s sensor and communications arrays.

As soon as he was back in the Hyperion’s pressurized corridors, Corso made his way immediately to one of the bubbles, letting his mind empty of thoughts, regrets and the pains of loss even as he went.

Despite this, he felt the tears streaming down his cheeks as he made his way down hollowly clanging drop shafts. But the frigate was so vast, there was little chance of running randomly into another human being, even with the half-dozen crewmembers Arbenz had now installed.

Finally he reached one such blister, and pulled himself up a ladder and into a low-ceilinged room with a clear roof that looked out on the stars. He ignored the automated warnings that spoke quietly as he entered. The lights dimmed automatically as the hatch closed beneath him and he let himself slide into the comforting warmth of an observation chair that automatically tilted to better accommodate his view of the universe.

Music played automatically, a soft swelling and ebbing of notes more like the rising and falling of the ride than anything orchestrated by human beings. He couldn’t summon the mental energy even to tell the Hyperion to turn the damn noise off.

What he had in mind was very simple.

The observation blister was a weak point in the hull, and the ship was old. The maintenance work done prior to its departure from Redstone had been the bare minimum necessary, given the restrictions of time and funding.

The automated warnings had made it clear that relatively little effort would be involved in destroying the clear blister before him and exposing himself to the vacuum of deep space. A series of switches under a panel within easy reach by the side of the reclining chair gave him control over explosive bolts that could blow the blister clear away from the hull, thus providing an emergency escape route. By the time any alarms could bring the ship’s crew running to the observation blister, it would already be far too late.

He touched a button and the chair dropped a little, giving him a still better view. He got as far as flipping open the panel, tapping in the same default code that most equipment on board still used (Dakota had been right about the appalling lack of appropriate security), and rested his finger on the emergency release button that would blow the bolts.

Then he slowly brought his hand back up and closed the panel.

Even with him dead, there was at least a chance Arbenz could still use the protocols he’d created to negotiate the derelict’s guidance systems and take it out of the Nova Arctis system. Corso knew the work he’d done was flawless. But if the derelict’s assault on both him and Kieran was then a deliberate act of sabotage, who was responsible for it?

He sat beneath the blister’s curving dome, with the lights up, staring up at his own reflection staring back down at him for what felt like a long time. His hand dropped again towards the panel by the side of the chair.

He already knew he wasn’t going to do it. If the Senator could still win even with him dead, that made the whole notion of killing himself pointless.

Sal came into his thoughts. Corso was pretty sure Sal was dead by now, but as is so often the case with people who constitute a large part of your life for enough years, his old friend’s physical presence was far from necessary in order for Corso to have a laborious, albeit primarily silent, imaginary argument with him, as if they sat there together beneath the curving transparent dome.

Sal won, of course. He usually did.

Corso tapped a button and the hatch in the floor next to the chair irised open once more, revealing the ladder. He climbed back down and went looking for Dakota.

Arbenz stepped into the moon base’s centre of operations, still feeling foggy from a lack of sleep. Anton Lourekas, the base’s medician, had been giving him shots to keep him awake, but there was only so long before he’d end up losing his grip on events. Things were starting to run out of control badly enough as it was.

He was not pleased to find Gardner waiting for him.

‘What do you mean by telling me I can’t communicate with my partners?’ Gardner nearly shouted in his face. Arbenz winced, too tired to be as angry as he really should be. ‘Your communications staff are downright refusing to patch me through the tach-nets-’

‘With good reason,’ Arbenz muttered, pushing past Gardner and nodding a greeting to the three technicians working at the opposite end of the room.

‘Don’t ignore me, Senator. I demand-’

Arbenz turned around. ‘If you continue to make demands in front of my own people, Mr Gardner, I’ll have you permanently confined to quarters on board the Hyperion. Do you understand me?’

Gardner looked apoplectic. ‘You can’t.’

‘But I can, David. And if your partners decide they don’t like that, then they can come and find me themselves. Once this is all over.’ He gestured over Gardner’s shoulder to a guard, who stepped forward from his station by the entrance to the ops-centre.

‘Now listen,’ Arbenz continued, softening his voice a little. ‘I believe some form of expeditionary force is on its way here, on board another coreship. That means we have to accept the fact our little secret has been compromised.’

Gardner’s eyes were already bugging out. ‘We have to contact-’

^‘No, Mr Gardner. We run silent until they actually get here, otherwise we risk the possibility that they also find out about the derelict, assuming they don’t already know about it.’