She reached the tube, retracted her landing gear, and with tiny steering jets, manoeuvred the pod into the throat of the torch and pa.s.sed into darkness. Here, n-s.p.a.ce radiation ratcheted up on the main sensor. Soon, the pod would grind to a halt, its unprotected AI core fried.

But it didn't have to last long.

Of course, if Brown decided to move the ship or alter its alt.i.tude, she and the pod would cease to exist. High-energy n-s.p.a.ce fields erupting down the tube in a raging vortex would unzip every electron and proton in her body, smashing them into their component quarks and consigning them to the tidal quantum foam that underlaid the universe.

Best not to think about having my electrons unzipped, thought Anneke. She brought the pod to the end of the tube, deftly locked it to a wall, and pulled on the hood of her coherent-field suit.

That's when it got tricky.

The pod did not have an airlock, so once she jammed open the hatch there was no way of refilling the pod with breathable atmosphere. The AI core was also close to burning out, which meant this was a one-way trip.

Opening the hatch, Anneke felt the air whoosh past as she climbed out. Not wasting time, she found a maintenance access hatch, fumbling for a few scary moments when the instruments she'd brought didn't match the Old Empire fittings. Then she was inside, d.o.g.g.i.ng the hatch closed, manually recycling the airlock she found at the end of the vacuum-filled access corridor on the other side.

She was on board the dreadnought with a few minutes to go and a kilometre and a half to cover on foot - using any of the ship's transportation systems would alert the bridge.

Anneke ran a scan of her vicinity and broke into a run.

Shortly, having carried out her mission as best she could, she was flattened to the wall of a maintenance tunnel and breathing heavily.

She's here, Maxumus suddenly realised. She's here.

The Envoy followed a short distance behind Black, who was hardly aware of the alien as he raced towards the stern of the dreadnought - the area of the ship most easily penetrated that contained the weapons bay, the section Anneke would be looking for.

That puzzled Black slightly. What was Kanto Kantoris to her? Why strive so hard to save a brutal, inhumane dictatorship that routinely sentenced innocent people to unspeakable deaths on the whim of its ruling *n.o.bles'?

Rescue defenceless women and children, if you have to, get weepy over stray pets, but inst.i.tutionalised ma.s.s murderers? Surely the woman was deranged.

Black dived into a drop tube, plunged aft at a hundred klicks an hour, and alighted four kilometres from where he had boarded the tube. He was in engineer country: power and weapons. And unless he was mistaken, Anneke was nearby.

Trouble was, her shielding was so cutting edge, the hi-tech sensors they'd st.i.tched into the ancient systems of the dreadnought were not registering her. No blind spots showed up.

*Maybe she is not here,' said the Envoy.

Black looked at him oddly. The alien had built-in scanners. Was he getting no readings or was he lying? Black felt uneasy.

*Why don't you take the port?' he said. *I'll go starboard. We'll flush her out. Concentrate the sensors on the weapons bay.'

*As you wish,' said the Envoy, becoming a blur of motion that vanished from the infrared scope Black peered through.

I wish he wouldn't do that, Black thought irritably, as he started down the main companionway leading to the starboard entrance of the weapons bay.

He hadn't gone far when he heard a noise. Or sensed something. He wasn't sure which. Either way, he kept still, listening with every fibre of his being. That's when he felt it. A tiny shift of air, feather-light. So faint it would not have lifted one hair on his head.

It was Anneke Longshadow. Black's skin p.r.i.c.kled and sweat popped out on his brow and soaked the material under his arms. His body shot adrenaline, pushing up his pulse rate, forcing him to suck more oxygen.

Just ahead.

Then he saw her. Or it, an infrared blur, a heat signature. Still some way off and shimmeringly faint due to the dampeners Anneke had come equipped with. Indeed, he was surprised to get as much resolution as he did. Perhaps she too was pumped on adrenaline, increasing her heartbeat and raising her body's temperature by a degree or two.

Mutual respect was beautiful but sweaty.

Black deployed every dampening field he had, cushioning sound, light, heat, ketones from his breath and body odour from the sweat glands in his armpits. Nearly invisible, he sought to close the gap with the blurry heat signature three hundred metres ahead.

Within a hundred metres, the signature disappeared. He stopped and listened, hearing a telltale sc.r.a.pe of metal, a pneumatic hiss, and then nothing. Okay. She'd climbed into a maintenance tunnel, which kept their air internal pressure and climate control separate to the ship's.

Black hurried forward, flipping a filter down over his eyepiece, looking for residue heat, traces of sweat and distinctive body oils on the hatches he pa.s.sed.

He stopped at a lateral hatch. It was where she'd gone m.

He placed a sensor - a mobile super-stethoscope on the hatch and scanned it. Vibrations indicated that Anneke was in the tunnel, moving rapidly away. Superimposed onto a 3-D image of the ship's layout he could see that a bend lay between him and his target, which a murmur in the vibration feedback confirmed.

He opened the hatch and climbed in, sending a brief encrypted message to the Envoy first. Insurance.

Padding down the tunnel he reached the bend, hurried around it, and walked straight into Anneke's boot as it connected with his jaw.

He fell backwards, adding deliberate momentum, then flipped over, grabbed a wall stanchion and yanked himself around the corner and out of direct view as the flash of a blaster filled the tunnel with eerie light and vaporised a hole in the wall opposite him. In thought rather than reflex, his own blaster came out. Then he waited.

She was just around the bend - probably flattened to the tunnel wall just as he was-gripping her blaster in a sweaty grip, just as he was. And waiting.

He who moves first, dies first.

Where had he heard that? From some RIM sensei? In his childhood? Except he'd never really had one of those. A childhood, that is.

*We should stop meeting like this,' he said.

*I'm happy to terminate our relationship any time,' came Anneke's voice, breathy and very close.

*I thought you just tried that.'

*Perish the thought, Brown. I was just warming up. *

Black chuckled. *Soon you won't have a sense of humour. You won't have anything.'

*Seems to me I've heard that before. And from you. *

*So now what, Anneke? Bit of a standoff. Problem is, I have reinforcements on the way.'

*Who says I don't?'

Black frowned. Was this just banter? Or was there something to it? Had Anneke come on board with others? He doubted it. Her profile indicated she not only liked to work alone, she hated putting others at risk, or being dependent on them.

But there was a first time for everything.

Best to end this now. He sent a message to the Envoy, instructing him to head up the tunnel from the other side. An affirmative came back.

*Calling for help?' asked Anneke.

*No, I was getting a recipe for roasted RIM agent. Any preferences for where you want to be shot?'

*Seat'ma Minor would be nice.'

*Funny. Oh, hark. Is that the Envoy I hear approaching?'

Silence. Black frowned and ran a quick scan. This close, no dampener fields would fool his scanners. His frown deepened.

According to the sensors, Anneke Longshadow was no longer in the tunnel. Impossibly, she had disappeared off the radar.

So he risked it.

In one fluid move, he hauled himself up on a wall stanchion and launched himself through the air, twisting over as he did so, keeping the blaster targeted on the spot where Anneke had been as he swung up and into the bend.

It was empty.

He landed unsteadily on his feet, grazing an arm against a shard on the wall, which he ignored as he stared at the floor.

Anneke's field generator belt lay there.

He whisded softly in admiration. The girl had more tricks than a magicians' convention. Without the generator belt, she had dropped back into the realm of normality. Black's scanners were, like most anti-personnel systems, designed to hunt for the telltale leakages from sophisticated dampening fields.

Really, who went about *naked', without any field protection? Indecent.

But clever. Always one step ahead.

Black heard the Envoy approaching, and knew the alien was also aware that Anneke had vanished. He bent down and picked up the belt.

Then he froze. He did not freeze because of what he saw. He froze because he wasn't given a choice.

Anneke had b.o.o.by-trapped the belt. The moment he touched it, an immobiliser field enveloped him as tiny numbers appeared on the belt's readout screen.

The numbers were counting down.

He had less than five seconds to live. This gave him long enough to both curse and to reflect that immobiliser fields were his personal nemesis.

Unable to turn, move or speak, he was aware that the Envoy was no longer nearby. Perhaps he'd mistaken the sound of the alien's approach with Anneke's escape. No matter. In another two and a half seconds, Black would be blown to bits and he would no longer care.

Even if the Envoy had been close by, it would not have mattered. A hatchling would resume his place. Black on the other hand was, in his own opinion, irreplaceable.

He watched, heart racmg, as the countdown reached two.

Then one.

Then zero.

Anneke had launched herself straight up through the hatch.

In the intersecting tunnel above, she quietly closed the hatch and retreated. In short order there would be a number of nasty explosions, and if she wanted to survive, she needed to disembark the ship, and fast.

And there was only one way to do that. The Dyson jump-gate.

She turned, intending to double time it to the nearest cargo elevator, but a dazzling white light hit her square in the face and she felt a deep wave of blackness sweep over her. As she fell, she was distantly aware of the Envoy watching her.

A meeting was under way. Anneke blinked, perplexed that she was still alive, that indeed anybody was still alive.

Then she understood.

She was shackled and bound and propped on a chair in a large round room. Sitting nearby was Nathaniel Brown. Behind him stood the Envoy, while before him stood a small party of hooded Sentinels.

Black noticed Anneke was awake. *Welcome back.

You haven't missed anything,' he said.

*I missed you,' she said.

*I a.s.sume you're talking about the bomb in your belt. Cute. The sort of thing I might have done. Effective, too.'

*Not effective enough.'

Black sighed. *Well, I have my friends here to thank,' he said, gesturing towards the Sentinels.

*They arrived in the middle of the battle and deployed a time-stop field on all inorganic devices. The immobiliser field quit and the bomb stopped somewhere between one and zero. Immaculate timing, if you ask me.'

The lead Sentinel made a noise. Anneke supposed it was disapproval, but all he said was, *You will withdraw from this place. Kanto Kantoris is now under the protection of the Sentinels. There will be no more bloodshed.'

Anneke felt a great weight lift from her shoulders. The cavalry had arrived, and not a second too late. Though maybe a second too early ...

Getting no response from Brown, the lead Sentinel c.o.c.ked its head. *Did you not hear me, Nathaniel Brown? There will be no more fighting today. If you do not comply, we will eliminate you.'

Brown snorted.

Anneke had expected any response but that. It sent a chill down her spine. Brown obviously knew something that absolved him of any fear of the Sentinels.

*I will not be leaving the field of battle today, my friends,' said Brown. *But you will be.'

The lead Sentinel took a step forward. Black looked up into the dark s.p.a.ce that its hood concealed. There was a glitter of eyes there, Anneke could see, but little else.

*This is your last warning.'

*And it is your first and only,' said Brown. *I know your secret, Sentinel. I know where you come from and why you guard Arachnor so fiercely. I know the thing that shames you.'

He tossed the Sentinel a miniature e-pad. The Sentinel, who had gone still at Brown's words, peered at the e-pad. A moment later Anneke heard a sharp intake of breath from beneath the hood.

Black stood up. *The information on that pad is poised to be distributed across the galaxy should anything happen to me and if my wishes are not met immediately. You will remove yourself from my ship and from this system. Indeed, you will withdraw all your forces and consulates from human worlds. If I ever see another Sentinel, the truth about whom and what you are will be released. Do you understand me?'

Absolute silence greeted his words.

*Do you understand me?' repeated Brown, his voice louder this time.

*We understand,' said the lead Sentinel. With that - to Anneke's horror - the Sentinels turned on their heels and retreated. Moments later, Brown's communicator confirmed that the Sentinels were withdrawing.