The Nymtoq warships arrived first, dropping out of the hypervoid much further out than we had been expecting. They were being cautious, but the Graal battle cruiser wasn’t far behind, and they weren’t known for their timidity.

As soon as the newcomers flashed up on the tactical display, the Fury launched three missiles in our direction. I opened my mouth to tell the Trouble Dog to go, but she was already accelerating straight down, following her insane flight plan.

In our rear view, the torpedoes changed course, tracking us, each carrying enough nuclear firepower to level a small city. I took hold of the arms of my chair and kept my eyes fixed firmly on the forward view, where the twisting gorges of the Brain were rushing at us.

A proximity alarm rang, but I didn’t know whether it was alerting me to the missiles on our tail or the giant mass of solid rock in our path.

“Five,” the Trouble Dog intoned.

I couldn’t even see the hole we were aiming for.

“Four.”

The world had gone from a round ball to a flat wall. The canyons were thick black lines on a white landscape.

“Three.”

I could see the hole now—a dark smudge at the bottom of a sinuous, dry riverbed.

“Two.”

We came like a comet. The terrain leapt at us. The hole opened like a mouth and I closed my eyes.

“One.”

I was thrown back so violently against my chair that it drove all the air from my lungs. My arms and legs slammed back. With a sharp stab of white-hot agony, I felt something pop in my left wrist. For an instant, I thought we’d hit the bottom of the canyon—but then realised we were braking. I opened my eyes to darkness on the screen. Flashing alerts on my console informed me that all three torpedoes had struck the edges or the floor of the canyon. A trio of fireballs flowered in our wake, and the radiation alarms were going crazy, but we were safely below ground. We had flipped over and were falling ass-backward through the planet at ridiculous speed.

As my eyes adjusted, I saw the light of our drive flame dimly refracted in the opaque walls. I fought to get my breath back, to ask where we were and whether we were going to be able to slow down in time.

But then the walls of the shaft fell away and we dropped into an enormous bubble of space much larger than the modest planet in which it was apparently housed. Orange sunlight washed across my face. The lights of city-sized buildings shone like stars on the inner skin of the bubble.

I gave a bark of laughter.

I couldn’t speak or tear my eyes from what I was seeing.