“She attacked the duplicate consciousness I had made. She had no reason to suspect it was anything other than my primary self. And while she was busy interacting with the decoy, I was free to observe the mechanisms she had employed to infiltrate that consciousness, and follow them back into the mind of the Fenrir herself, where I disabled her defensive systems prior to the arrival of the torpedoes I had earlier fired.”

I let out a breath. “You hacked the hacker.”

The Trouble Dog smiled sadly. “She never even knew I was there.”

At her station, Laura Petrushka had been watching us with her mouth hanging open. Now she said, “So, what now?”

It was a good question. A few moments ago, I had been expecting to die. Now, we had been granted a reprieve and, as captain, I had certain responsibilities. I sat up and straightened the baseball cap on my head.

“How much time until the Adalwolf gets here?”

“Less than an hour,” the ship replied, suddenly businesslike again.

“Can we beat him to the Brain?”

“Possibly.”

“Then we’ll try that.” My eyes prickled with tears I was determined not to shed. I sniffed wetly. I tugged at my cuffs and zipped up the neck of my jumpsuit.

“Best speed,” I ordered crisply. “We have a landing party to retrieve.”

Fifty-Six: Ashton Childe

FIFTY-SIX

ASHTON CHILDE

At the bottom of the stairwell, we came to a row of open cubicles, arrayed like a bank of elevators in a hotel lobby. The corridor continued past them for about a dozen metres before ending in a right-angled corner.

Alva Clay paused to try her earbud. “Dead,” she said after a moment. “No signal at all.”

Despite her obvious hostility towards him, Preston stood as close to her as he could, as if drawing reassurance from her proximity. He looked warily back and forth along the corridor, from the stairs we’d just descended to the corner up ahead.

“Where now?” he asked.

Clay screwed up her mouth in distaste. “We can’t stay here,” she said. “We need to find somewhere to hole up, but this is too exposed. If we were attacked from both directions at once, we’d be cut to shreds by the crossfire.”

“So, onwards then?”

“Yeah.”

She pulled the magazine from her Archipelago pistol and checked the remaining shots.