The taxi headed for the city centre, where the buildings rose higher, manifesting the same blocky and severe architectural style as found in any other Freehold settlement. Perhaps ten minutes after picking him up at the Residency, the taxi cut down a ramp into the underground parking area of a building that was just one of several identical monolithic slabs arranged in a row.

He quickly disembarked and pulled the cheap breather off his face just as an elevator opened, chiming softly. He guessed he was meant to get inside.

It delivered Ty a minute later to an apparently deserted floor several levels up. The walls were bare concrete, with gaping holes where electrical and communications systems still had to be installed. He proceeded down a long corridor, checking through door after door until he at last found an office s.p.a.ce containing some furniture: a large leather seat and an expensive-looking imager and tach-net data combo. A mound of packing material was still scattered around.

The imager came to life even as Ty stepped towards the chair. It briefly displayed the manufacturer's logo in iridescent 3D, before that was replaced by the head and upper shoulders of what was obviously a software-generated avatar.

'Mr Whitecloud,' began the avatar. 'Thank you for coming. Please take a seat.'

The voice, too, was synthesized, since there was a discernible pause between each word: as if whoever was speaking to him via the avatar was punching the message into a keyboard rather than allowing his own voice to be processed by the machine's inbuilt privacy circuits.

'I represent the Consortium Legislate's intelligence division,' the avatar continued. 'We have brought you here to discuss the artefact you recovered.'

Ty sat down. 'How do I know you're who you say you are?' he demanded bluntly. For some reason, he was not surprised that whoever he was talking to knew his real ident.i.ty. 'For that matter, why not just send someone real?'

The avatar ignored his questions. 'We believe Dakota Merrick and Lucas Corso intend to instigate a new expedition, one aimed at penetrating deep inside Emissary territory.'

Ty stared at the image, stunned. 'Why are you telling me this?' he asked.

'They're going to recruit you for the expedition. We want you to accept their proposal and report back to us, as and when required.'

Ty licked his lips and glanced around him. 'Why the h.e.l.l would I do any such thing? Is that why you brought me here?'

'If you prefer, I'd be happy to transmit your current whereabouts to the Freehold authorities, Mr Whitecloud, along with details of your true ident.i.ty and your war-crime charges.'

'Wait!' Ty was halfway out of his chair. 'Just wait a minute.' He reached up to clasp his brow with one shaking hand. 'All right. But how am I supposed to contact you?'

'We can maintain contact with you via an encrypted tach-net link, the details of which are stored on the data-ring on the imager before you.'

Ty glanced at the imager's plate and for the first time noticed a silvery data-ring sitting there, but made no move towards it. Not for the first time, he had the sensation of teetering on the very edge of a steep precipice.

'Mr Whitecloud,' the avatar repeated. 'Please pick up the ring. The data contained within it uses an extremely robust form of encryption, which can be used to establish a secure communications link while disguising its own activities.'

Ty didn't move. 'You're serious? They're going on some kind of expedition . . . to the Emissaries?'

The avatar didn't reply.

Ty let out an angry sigh. 'I'm grateful you got me out of there, but there are going to be people out looking for me now. Where am I supposed to go?'

'Go back to the residency. Tell them you escaped because you believed it was under attack; that much is certainly true. The explosives used will be traced to a Uchidanist undercover tactical unit currently operating out of Unity. In your desperation to escape, you got into the first vehicle you saw. But,' the avatar added, 'you must take the ring with you. That much is vital.'

Ty glanced at the ring. 'It's not safe back there,' he complained. 'There was a man there Marcus Weil, one of the men guarding me. He said he knew who I was and he'd kill me before he'd ever let me leave.'

The avatar gazed at him, unblinking, for so long that Ty began to wonder if whoever was on the other side of this transmission was in fact still present.

'Go straight back down to the taxi that brought you here, and it will take you to a police station not far from here,' the avatar finally replied. 'Tell them that you got in the taxi outside the residency, asked it for help, and it brought you to them. Mention nothing about coming here, Mr Whitecloud. You will of course give them the name Nathan Driscoll.'

'And what about Weil?' Ty asked.

'With any luck, you won't have to worry about him any more.'

'But . . .'

Shut up and just be glad you're alive, Ty told himself. Anything was better than being trapped in the same building as that knife-wielding madman. Ty told himself. Anything was better than being trapped in the same building as that knife-wielding madman.

He stared at the ring still sitting on the plate, and impulsively reached out for it.

At the exact same moment as his fingers came into contact with the ring, Ty felt a sharp spike of pain in one temple and squeezed his eyes shut, glimpsing a tiny spark of light in the corner of one eye.

Panic gripped him. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so . . .

The next thing he knew, he was still sitting in the chair, but the avatar was gone and the comms unit had shut itself down.

There had been something that worried him terribly, but he was d.a.m.ned if he could remember what it was.

Ty stared at the ring nestling in his palm, then slid it on to one finger. He felt it contract slightly until it was snug against his flesh.

He then made his way back through the deserted offices the way he had come, disturbed by what he realized was an entirely irrational terror that Weil might suddenly appear from around some corner, blade raised to slash out at him. Ty pushed the fear back, thinking: For one more day I'm still alive. And I'll be alive tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that For one more day I'm still alive. And I'll be alive tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that . . . It was like putting one foot in front of the other, or even breathing, drawing down each swallow of air and then exhaling it. You did what you had to in order to stay alive, to stay ahead of your enemies. . . . It was like putting one foot in front of the other, or even breathing, drawing down each swallow of air and then exhaling it. You did what you had to in order to stay alive, to stay ahead of your enemies.

So he made his way to the elevator, and returned to the taxi.

Chapter Sixteen.

The Mjollnir' Mjollnir's bow was blunt and rounded, with a thick bulge one-third of the way back, concealing an internal centrifuge that could be spun up to provide artificial gravity. She tapered slightly towards the stern, before flaring out again to accommodate fusion drives powerful enough to push her halfway across a solar system in just days, at maximum burn. At the moment, however, she floated peacefully in orbit above Redstone, caged by a spider's web of pressurized maintenance bays that would be dismantled once the hull repair crews had finished their work.

'Bridge of Mjollnir Mjollnir to the approaching shuttles,' spoke a voice in Corso's ear. 'We need to confirm the details of your manifest. Who am I speaking to?' to the approaching shuttles,' spoke a voice in Corso's ear. 'We need to confirm the details of your manifest. Who am I speaking to?'

Corso glanced at the three other figures seated behind him in the supply shuttle. Like him, they all wore bulky armoured s.p.a.cesuits, although for the moment they had left their helmets off. He saw Leo Olivarri, Eduard Martinez and Dan Perez. Perez had been the Mjollnir' Mjollnir's head of engineering until, like Nancy Schiller, he had been removed from his job for remaining loyal to Martinez.

Olivarri's boss, Ray Willis, was on a second shuttle following a parallel course to their own, which also carried Ted Lamoureaux, Nancy and Ty Whitecloud. The three members of the frigate's crew remained completely unaware that the man they knew as Nathan Driscoll was operating under an a.s.sumed ident.i.ty.

Perez signalled with one hand, and Corso put the Mjollnir Mjollnir link on standby. link on standby.

'Your name is Herera,' Perez instructed Corso. 'Victor Herera.'

'Why the h.e.l.l is he asking?'

Perez shrugged. 'It'll be nothing more than a standard security precaution. And it's probably just s.h.i.tty luck they picked on us.'

Corso reopened the comms link. 'Sorry, bridge, we're getting random system glitches. You're talking to Captain Herera, manifest five alpha zero.' He then added, 'Any problems up there?'

'No problems,' replied a bored-sounding voice at the other end. 'Security's been moved up a couple of notches this morning.'

'Any idea why?' Corso kept his voice casual.

'd.a.m.ned if I know, but we're requesting you to dock at Bay Three, not Four. Sorry about that. Over and out.'

Corso cut the link and turned to look at the men behind him. 'Do you think they've worked out who we are?'

Perez's reply was blunt and to the point. 'If they had, Senator, we'd already be dead.'

Corso nodded and turned to face the viewscreens once more, while trying to ignore the tension growing in his chest.

Whatever lingering doubts Corso still harboured about the Senate's intentions had vanished a few nights earlier, when Marcus Kenley had appeared at his Senate lodgings in a stolen taxi, its electronic brain hacked in order to prevent it from revealing either its occupant or its whereabouts. He brought with him the news that several of Corso's supporters in the Senate had been arrested during the past hour.

Corso had dressed in a hurry, and then discovered Kenley had also hacked the taxi's speed limiter, as the little vehicle accelerated with frightening speed, almost flipping on to its side at a sharp turn.

Following Jarret's defeat in the challenge, Kenley had been instrumental in setting up safe-houses around Unity, and before long they arrived at a colonial-style building on the outskirts of town. It was a huddle of old-fashioned pressure-domes like something out of a historical 'viro.

Griffith and Velardo were already there, using secure data-net connections to organize more extractions. Olivarri and Willis arrived with the morning, along with some late arrivals who had their own stories of close escapes from the Senate's police.

At first the public news networks told of chaos in the streets surrounding the Senate, but when the networks went offline Corso knew his worst suspicions had come true, and a counter-coup was under way. He kept himself awake throughout the next few nights with a steady diet of coffee and amphetamines, throwing himself into finalizing the details of a plan to take control of the Mjollnir Mjollnir before it could be removed from Redstone's...o...b..tal s.p.a.ce. before it could be removed from Redstone's...o...b..tal s.p.a.ce.

Kenley went off and returned a few hours later with Dan Perez in tow; both men departed once again, this time accompanied by Ray Willis, on a mission to retrieve the Mjollnir' Mjollnir's commander. They reappeared with Martinez some hours later, looking dirty and exhausted, Willis's face streaked with blood that was clearly not his own.

By then Whitecloud had been tracked down to a secure government building, but by the time someone went out to try and extract him, the residency building had been bombed and Whitecloud had vanished.

His subsequent reappearance in a Unity police station, kilometres away from the residency, raised questions that Corso did not have the time to try and answer. Sympathetic contacts within the Senate's own security services arranged for Whitecloud to be transferred to a less secure facility, where falsified doc.u.mentation was all that was needed to extract him and bring him to the safe-house, to join with the rest of them.

But of far greater concern to Corso was Dakota's failure to show, even as the time to launch for the Mjollnir Mjollnir approached. He felt her absence like an ulcer throbbing in his guts, because without her everything he had planned was for nothing. He found his mood swinging between fury and despondency, and yet there was no way to contact her, not even through Lamoureaux after he also arrived at the safe-house. approached. He felt her absence like an ulcer throbbing in his guts, because without her everything he had planned was for nothing. He found his mood swinging between fury and despondency, and yet there was no way to contact her, not even through Lamoureaux after he also arrived at the safe-house.

At one point, looking up from where he had fallen asleep in front of a screen, Corso realized that more than seventy-two hours had pa.s.sed since his narrowly escaping arrest. He looked around at the people sitting before other screens, or talking quietly on secure links, or sleeping on mats on the floor.

During the next twenty-four hours most of them would scatter, through Kenley's underground network, to other safe-houses, while a very few, himself included, would board a couple of shuttles in place of the team of engineers detailed to check final repairs to the Mjollnir. Mjollnir.

That, at least, was the plan. But if Dakota didn't show, that could still undo everything they had worked towards.

Corso activated the shuttle's interface, and saw they were only a few minutes away from docking with the frigate. He tapped on a screen before twisting around to face Martinez. 'I'm updating the other shuttle on a course change. But not the one the Mjollnir's Mjollnir's expecting.' expecting.'

'Senator?'

'If they're already on to us groundside, they could be diverting us into a trap. The last thing we need is to find ourselves facing an armed welcoming committee. Am I right in thinking each docking bay has an emergency override that can be triggered by an outside signal?'

'If you have the right signature code, yes,' Martinez allowed, 'but it's bound to tip them off that we're up to something.'

'It might be too late for that already. Give me the code anyway.'

Martinez sent him the code through their linked suit comms, while Corso glanced at the screen in front of him to watch the frigate growing larger by the second.

He punched in the course correction. 'Bay Five it is.'

Sunlight broke over the rim of the planet below, filtered down to a soft glow by the shuttle's external sensor arrays. A screen showed clouds drifting over the Mount Mor peninsula, while the broad curve of coast along which Port Gabriel was located could be seen to the west. Approach warnings began to blink as the two shuttles neared a row of bay entrances close to Mjollnir' Mjollnir's bow.

'Mjollnir to lead shuttle,' declared the voice from the frigate's bridge. 'You're heading the wrong way. Please get back on your original course.' to lead shuttle,' declared the voice from the frigate's bridge. 'You're heading the wrong way. Please get back on your original course.'

'We're having problems with our automatic guidance systems,' Corso improvised, 'and it can't lock on to your docking signal. We're trying to compensate for that, but it's tricky.'

He heard the officer at the other end of the link move away from the microphone to speak to someone else, but he couldn't make out any of their mumbled words before the first voice came back online. 'We've just queried your shuttle's on-board systems and they seem to be working fine. This is your final warning, Captain Herera. Now head for Bay Three.'

Corso put the link on hold and twisted around to look at his fellow pa.s.sengers. 'Any ideas?'

Martinez shrugged. 'f.u.c.k it, we're just thirty seconds from docking. Use the override to get the bay doors open and don't even bother replying. If they don't know who we are yet, they're sure as h.e.l.l going to realize pretty d.a.m.n soon that we're not the engineers they were expecting.'

Corso nodded, and punched in the override. A moment later the bridge of the Mjollnir Mjollnir came back online. came back online.

'Bridge to shuttle, rendezvous without boarding. Repeat, rendezvous without boarding, Captain Herera. Is that clear? Dock with the external maintenance bays, but not with the Mjollnir Mjollnir itself. If you board, we'll consider it a hostile action.' itself. If you board, we'll consider it a hostile action.'

Corso reached out and terminated the link. The Mjollnir Mjollnir seemed to rush towards them, blotting out the stars beyond. Now all that could be seen on the displays was a wall of grey metal expanding towards him. seemed to rush towards them, blotting out the stars beyond. Now all that could be seen on the displays was a wall of grey metal expanding towards him.

A thin line of light appeared directly ahead, quickly growing wider as ma.s.sive steel doors swung open to reveal the brightly lit interior of Bay Five.

Corso felt his body forced back into the seat as the shuttle decelerated hard, and he wondered if they were cutting it too fine. But before he had completed this thought they were already inside, automated grapples seizing the tiny ship and lowering it into a docking cradle.

The next step was critical: they had to disembark from the shuttle and get inside the frigate proper, before the crew on the bridge had a chance to react. Long, precious seconds pa.s.sed while an airlock docked with the hatch in the shuttle's belly. They spent this time pulling on their helmets and securing them.

Corso knew there was a risk that Simenon might decide to dump the internal atmosphere and flush them out into s.p.a.ce. Despite this concern, for the moment they kept their visors raised. It was easier to communicate face to face, and besides the helmets were designed to self-seal in case of a catastrophic loss of pressure.

Corso himself went through the airlock last, dropping only slowly in the zero gravity before emerging into a disembarkation lounge located right next to the bays. Behind him the bulkheads rumbled and shook as the second shuttle docked.

Martinez and the rest were already checking the seals on each other's suits. Corso checked Perez's suit, then Perez did the same for him. There was a clanging sound nearby, before, one by one, four pa.s.sengers from the second shuttle dropped into the lounge, through a separate airlock.

Olivarri meanwhile deposited an oblong case on the shelf running along one wall, and opened it to reveal several lightweight pulse-rifles. He pa.s.sed these out to everyone but Lamoureaux and White-cloud.

Martinez picked up a rifle, before stepping over to Corso and clapping him on the shoulder. 'You did a nice job getting us this far, Senator. But I think I'll take it from here.'

Martinez turned and called for everybody's attention.

'First, a reminder of what we can expect. Mjollnir Mjollnir is currently undergoing last-minute checks before departing for the Sol system, a day from now, with a full complement of crew that's expected to arrive here in no more than another three hours. In the meantime there's a minimal presence on board I reckon a skeleton crew of no more than a dozen.' is currently undergoing last-minute checks before departing for the Sol system, a day from now, with a full complement of crew that's expected to arrive here in no more than another three hours. In the meantime there's a minimal presence on board I reckon a skeleton crew of no more than a dozen.'

'Why so few?' asked Lamoureaux.

'Because the main security contingent charged with guarding the frigate headed back down to the surface just under an hour ago. That leaves us a fairly narrow window of opportunity to take control and break from orbit. Mr Driscoll,' he turned to Whitecloud, 'you're going to head straight to the labs. Leo, escort him there and keep your eyes peeled. Don't engage anyone you run into if you can avoid it. Make sure first of all that the artefact's where it should be and report back if there's any problems or likelihood of delays.'

Corso watched the two men depart and felt his lips tighten in disapproval. He did not enjoy having to maintain this pretence regarding Whitecloud, or even having to act civilly towards him, and yet it was clear from his own research into Whitecloud's career that the man was quite brilliant. It was hard to believe someone with such a remarkable mind could have used it to perpetrate such terrible acts of inhumanity, but history was littered with just such men.

The rest of them then moved out of the lounge, and floated in pairs down a long shaft. Dan Perez and Nancy Schiller took point, while Ray Willis came last, guarding their rear. The ship was running at low power, so they proceeded through a strange half-twilight, their shadows racing in front of them like black ghosts whenever they pa.s.sed a dimly glowing light fixture.

Corso swallowed and tried to ignore the fits of light-headedness that sometimes blurred his vision. He was still running on chemicals, and the last occasion he had actually slept seemed like part of another lifetime.

So much of what they had planned hinged on various a.s.sumptions, particularly that the frigate's security overrides would have remained unaltered in the wake of Martinez's arrest. If they had been changed, however, the extra time taken up by burning or blowing their way through various sealed entrances might allow the security services enough time to muster a serious response.

Before he could ponder any further, they arrived at a transport terminal and boarded a cylindrical windowless car that carried them swiftly along a tunnel running the entire length of the frigate, and headed towards the centrifuge's hub.