It was time for something drastic.

A minute or two later she sensed Lamoureaux entering the bridge. Indecision froze her for a moment, then she forced herself to stand, the chair's petals folding back around the base of the dais in response.

Martinez was still on the bridge, crouching over a console, talking to Perez over a comms link. He was paying no attention to either Ted or Dakota.

She stepped down and seized Lamoureaux by the arm, as he approached her, pulling him instead towards the exit. Her voice was just above a whisper as she spoke.

'I need your help, Ted. Things just went from bad to worse.'

'What do you mean?'

'Take a look,' she said, transferring the neutrino flux data to him via a link.

His eyes became momentarily unfocused, and his jaw flopped open. 'How long have we got?' he exclaimed, once he had recovered.

'Quiet!' she hissed, nodding towards Martinez, but the Commander was still talking to Perez, still oblivious to the pair of them. 'We've got maybe twelve hours maximum before this whole system goes up.'

Ted looked befuddled, glancing quickly at Martinez and then back again. 'And you want to keep this a secret secret?'

'No, just . . . wait for twenty minutes before telling them.'

He eyed her with increasing suspicion. 'Dakota, what the h.e.l.l are you up to?'

'Here.' She linked with him again and transferred over the command structure for the Meridian drones. 'You can handle them just as well as I can.'

Over Lamoureaux's shoulder, she saw Martinez glance up and study them for a few seconds, then look away again.

She nodded silently towards the pa.s.sageway outside the bridge. He picked up the hint and followed her.

'Take the chair and run the drones for me,' she told him once they were outside.

'Why can't you do it yourself?'

The ship's data-s.p.a.ce informed her that Corso and Perez were on their way back from the hold. One of the landers was hooked up to an airlock and ready for launch.

'Do you remember what I said earlier, that there was something on board this ship that was leading the Emissaries straight towards us?'

He nodded.

'That something is me, Ted. I don't know what it is or how he did it, but a man called Hugh Moss planted something on me. Not even my Magi ship realized it was there. While you're running the drones, I'm going to get on board that lander and use it to draw the scouts away from the frigate. That way you'll have a better way of staying alive, while I can go after Trader. n.o.body else needs to be down there at the cache but me, anyway.'

'Dakota, no.'

'For G.o.d's sake, Ted! I need to do this. I need to put an end to it all.' She could feel tears p.r.i.c.kling the corners of her eyes.

'We should wait for the others to get here. Besides . . .' He shook his head. 'No, this is beyond just crazy. Even if you're determined to go down there on your own, n.o.body's going to be mad enough to let you.'

Her expression became icy calm. 'Don't get in my way, Ted, or I'll shut down the drones. The frigate would be left totally defenceless.'

He swallowed. 'I'd reactivate them.'

'But it might take you too long. There are already things out there trying to burrow their way through the hull.'

'I don't think you'd-'

'Try me, Ted.'

She watched him studying her, trying to make up his mind whether she was serious.

'You're out of your mind,' he said eventually. 'That's what they've all been saying, and I defended you. But they were right, Dakota. You're out of your f.u.c.king mind.'

'Don't let anyone come after me. Do you understand me?'

He stared back at her in silence, filled with impotent fury, as she turned and ran down the pa.s.sageway.

Trader's yacht had utilized a maximum-evasion pattern as it descended towards the surface of the cache-world, but it had still suffered enormous damage from the ground-based defences. Once his ship had dropped into the cache's main shaft and begun its descent deep below the planet's surface, however, the shooting stopped.

Thousands of pa.s.sageways had been cut into the rock all the way down the shaft. Before very long, Trader guided his yacht to a landing in one specific pa.s.sageway where he knew he would find the cache's drive-forge. Once he had exited his ship, he took a moment to approach the lip of the pa.s.sageway, in order to gaze down into the abyssal depths below.

Rows of lights descended the shaft's smooth walls, all the way down to where they appeared to converge tens of kilometres below his vantage point. On the far side of the shaft he saw a city-sized factory complex imbued with that same ineluctable air of decay and abandonment.

The walls around him had a half-melted look, with more ruined machinery lying abandoned. It didn't require a great deal of conjecture to realize it had been a very long time since any new drive-cores had been manufactured here.

The Emissaries, despite the advance warning, had clearly not expected the cache itself to be targeted. That they had then chosen to destroy the entire system made it clear they had finally recognized their error, even if much too late.

Trader swivelled in his field-bubble, then guided it deeper into the gently curving pa.s.sageway, dodging past the blackened hulks of dead technology.

'I don't give a d.a.m.n what she said!' Corso screamed. 'We have to go after her!'

'You want to go after her, fine,' said Lamoureaux, 'but I'm not willing to call her bluff. She looked crazy enough to do it.'

'It's too late anyway,' said Martinez, from across the bridge. 'She's already boarded the lander and taken it out. She must have sneaked right past you and Dan while you were on your way here.'

'We got a distress call,' explained Perez. 'That's why we came back here as fast as we could.'

'Ship-wide or direct to your helmets?' asked Lamoureaux.

'Direct,' Perez replied. 'Not. . .' He fell silent mid-sentence.

Lamoureaux nodded. 'She faked that alert.'

Perez rubbed his face with both hands and dropped into a nearby seat. 'I knew we should have stayed with the lander.'

'Here's the thing I don't understand,' Corso growled, moving closer to Lamoureaux. 'You could have warned us and you didn't even try to stop her. Why?'

Lamoureaux's nostrils flared angrily. 'I already told you. She threatened to shut the drones down, and leave us defenceless. What did you expect me to do?'

Corso shook his head vehemently. 'I refuse to believe she'd make a threat like that, let alone follow through on it.'

'She did did make a threat like that,' Lamoureaux yelled. 'Maybe, Lucas, you don't know her nearly as G.o.dd.a.m.n well as you think you do.' make a threat like that,' Lamoureaux yelled. 'Maybe, Lucas, you don't know her nearly as G.o.dd.a.m.n well as you think you do.'

Corso punched him in the nose.

Lamoureaux staggered back, then stumbled, collapsing to the deck. Corso loomed over him, his expression furious.

Strong hands pulled Corso away. A moment later he was pushed into a chair and found himself face to face with Martinez, the Commander's hand planted firmly against his chest.

'I was on the bridge when all of this happened,' said Martinez. 'Now, I didn't hear what Dakota and Ted were saying to each other, but the responsibility is still with me. So if you want to take a swing at anyone, try me.'

Lamoureaux wiped blood away from his nose and glared at Corso. 'Want to know what else she told me, Lucas? She's She's the reason the Emissaries knew where to find us.' the reason the Emissaries knew where to find us.'

Corso stared at him. 'What?'

Lamoureaux laughed, and then coughed. 'That's exactly what she told me. The Emissaries are tracking her, her, not the frigate. That's all I can tell you.' not the frigate. That's all I can tell you.'

'He's telling the truth.' Martinez nodded towards the overhead display, which still tracked the ongoing engagement. 'The scouts are breaking away and going after the lander.'

Corso stared up at it, too, with a stricken expression. 'She'll never make it.'

Lamoureaux staggered upright and pulled himself back into the interface chair.

Martinez let go of Corso and stepped over to Lamoureaux, handing him a handkerchief. Ted took it from him with mumbled thanks.

'Dan, keep an eye on Mr Corso here. If he tries taking a swing at anyone else, find somewhere to lock him up. Meanwhile, Mr Lamoureaux, I want you to do some calculations. Work out how long you think we have left before the star blows, and how much power we'll need to jump out of the vicinity in time, before it does.'

'She's abandoned us,' Corso muttered, half to himself.

'Don't be so sure,' said Martinez. 'I'd say she's given us some breathing room. Ted, put her current trajectory and location on the overhead.'

An image of the cache-world and its star appeared overhead, complete with outsized representations of both the Mjollnir Mjollnir and the lander, the latter already fast approaching the planet's surface. and the lander, the latter already fast approaching the planet's surface.

Lamoureaux's reply was m.u.f.fled by the handkerchief pressed to his face. 'If she can stay alive long enough, she should reach the cache itself in about fifteen minutes.'

The lander received a direct hit that sent it spinning so hard that Dakota was almost ripped out of her seat restraints. A sudden roar blanketed out the whine and screech of the bulkheads as the atmosphere vented, while her filmsuit enveloped her instantly.

Prior to this, dozens of direct hits and near-misses had finally overwhelmed one of the two field-generators attached to the lander. Apart from her filmsuit, the only thing between her and certain death was a couple of Meridian drones she had peeled away from the main pack. She had been worried Lamoureaux might not allow her control over them, but in the end he hadn't tried to stop her.

On the screen, she could see the cache growing bigger as she dropped towards it. According to the signal she was still picking up from Trader's yacht, he was more than thirty kilometres directly down the throat of the shaft.

Something about the thought of descending into that bottomless hole made her skin p.r.i.c.kle with terror.

Down, down, down she went, the cache expanding towards Dakota like a wide and hungry mouth.

More pulse-beam fire blasted out from defensive structures scattered around the mouth of the cache. The lander spun under another direct hit, and alert messages flared across her screens.

She caught one brief glimpse of vast fields of slag and rubble around the mouth of the shaft, before the lander began to drop down into limitless darkness. Faraway lights, mounted on the sides of the shaft, illuminated what looked like abandoned cities or factories clinging to the walls.

She left the two drones on guard near the surface. They wouldn't be able to hold off a full-frontal a.s.sault for long, but at least she would have some warning if the Emissaries were about to follow her in.

The lander dropped down farther, while the mouth of the cache seemed to grow smaller and smaller, increasingly far overhead.

Trader, I'm not going to let you get away with the artefact. Do you hear me?

Silence.

Either something had happened to him, or he wasn't interested in talking.

Trader? Are you there?

It had all been going so well until he had tried to activate the Mos Hadroch.

Trader had placed it in the mouth of the drive-forge, and then accessed the command structure he had retrieved from the Greater Magellanic Cloud so very, very long ago, activating it through a meshlike apparatus woven around two of his secondary manipulators.

The effect had been spectacular.

During his initial experiments, using Whitecloud as his proxy, it had become rapidly clear the artefact was much further beyond his understanding than he had antic.i.p.ated. Aspects of its operation pointed to a powerful, almost G.o.dlike intelligence buried somewhere within its depths.

At first, the device had appeared to unravel, its outer sh.e.l.l peeling open to reveal internal components that defied comprehension. Its shape had mutated rapidly, expanding well beyond the drive-forge, and Trader had felt the presence of that overwhelming intelligence, for the first time, as it ransacked his yacht's...o...b..ard systems and even, to his shock, his own mind.

He had turned to flee, recognizing that events were already spinning far out of his control. But it was far too late: the artefact had already expanded to surround him, its malevolent intent suddenly and startlingly clear.

Chapter Thirty-seven.

The lander kept following the signal from Trader's ship, until it dropped down on to a shelf extending out from a darkened side pa.s.sage no different from the thousands of others she had seen during her long descent. The onboard systems told Dakota there was a protective field placed over the mouth of the pa.s.sageway that retained a breathable atmosphere.

She exited her craft quickly, a torch in hand, and soon spotted Trader's yacht resting nearby in the gloom, on a bed of shaped fields. Most of its drive-spines were either broken or melted or both. She flicked the torch on, then bounded forward in long, loping strides due to the minimal gravity, manoeuvring her way past cluttered wreckage and abandoned machinery.

After a couple of minutes, Dakota reached a side chamber. When she shone the torch inside it, it was to see a machine she recognized as a drive-forge. As she moved closer, she observed that the Mos Hadroch had been mounted inside it.

A moment later she nearly stumbled over Trader himself.

The tiny field-generators that normally held a protective sphere of briny water around him now lay scattered across the floor of the chamber. His enormous bulk somehow looked much smaller, lying unprotected on the dusty ground. His skin looked grey and cracked, as his manipulators twisted and slithered helplessly across the grey stone underneath him.

Jesus and Buddha. You're alive? Trader's movements were growing ever weaker as she watched. She knelt beside him and touched the fingers of one hand to his side. His flesh felt rough, abrasive. Let me try, Trader?The great bulk of his body shuddered one last time, and became still.She remained kneeling by him for a few more seconds, wondering why she didn't feel anything, not even vindication or triumph. Instead she only felt hollow, as if all this had been an anticlimax.