“Hence the ride on the RV.” I lowered my voice. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but there’s a Conglomeration Scimitar heading in this direction, but it won’t arrive in the vicinity for another few days. My job’s to get to the Gallery, find Sudak and ascertain whether she’s dead or alive, and then signal the Scimitar to come and pick her up.”

“And it doesn’t matter which?”

“The most important thing is that she doesn’t fall into enemy hands.”

“And by enemy, you mean…?”

I let out a breath. “Just about everybody else at this point.”

“Including me?”

“In theory, yes.”

Laura smiled. “Then why bring me along?”

It was a good question, and one for which I only had half an answer.

“Because I get the feeling this is going to be harder than they’re making out,” I said carefully. “And I could use the help of a professional.”

I watched her amusement fade.

“And you’re not worried about me reporting back to the Outward?” She said it quietly, all traces of camaraderie dispelled.

“About a dead poet?” I slipped off my jacket and dropped it onto the covers beside the gun. My clothes stank of the jungle and I wanted to burn them. Just the smell was enough to make my left eye twitch. I opened my luggage and pulled out a clean white t-shirt.

“Think of it as a holiday.” I hoped she couldn’t see my hands trembling. “A few days away from the humidity and stench.”

“And in return?”

“You get to find out what happened to your liner.”

Nineteen: Ona Sudak

NINETEEN

ONA SUDAK

Adam found me kneeling by the dead woman. I was surprised to see him, having already given him up for dead, and jumped up to crush him in a bear hug.

“There’s a shuttle coming in,” he said. He had an emergency survival suit in each hand. His features were ashen, his clothes ragged, his skin scratched and bleeding.

I peered back in the direction from which he’d come, trying to see through the two-metre gap between the bottom of the ’dam and the floor of the canyon, but fallen pieces of broken ship obscured my view.

“What kind of shuttle?”

“I didn’t get a good look.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Does it matter?”

I brushed a final strand of hair from the dead woman’s face and stood up. My knees hurt.

“Of course it matters. We don’t know what they want.” In the opposite direction, a hundred metres from the outer fringes of the crash site, the canyon took a sharp turn to the left. If we could make it to that corner—and then into the rest of the labyrinth beyond—we’d have a fighting chance of losing ourselves before anyone came looking for us.