‘But now we know the Mos Hadroch is real.’ She again traced the curve of his jaw with a fingertip. ‘You found it and you brought it back? Now you know what it is, am I right?’ There was an intensity in her expression, a touch of avarice to the gleam of her eyes.

‘No, it’s still locked away on board the ship that carried it back here. That’s the reason the contest took place – Jarret wanted control of that ship and whatever it brought back with it.’

He saw shock alternating with anger in her expression, as she replied. ‘Things haven’t really changed so much while I’ve been away, have they?’

‘I’m afraid not, no.’

‘All right, so what do we know about the Mos Hadroch?’

‘Nothing, really. It’s not even certain we did find it. What we found was the body of an Atn sealed up inside a hidden passageway on an abandoned clade-world. And . . .’

He had been on the verge of saying Whitecloud’s real name. The sedatives were making it hard to think straight.

‘It’s possible what we’re looking for is locked away inside the Atn’s body,’ he continued quickly. ‘Except, as soon as it was brought on board the Mjollnir, it was locked away under Senate orders. The Legislate’s arranged a secret deal to have the thing’s remains shipped to Sol as soon as some essential repairs are finished.’

Dakota was staring at him open-mouthed. ‘I . . . I didn’t know any of this,’ she said finally. ‘We can’t just leave it in the hands of people who don’t know what they’ve got. Not if you’ve really found the Mos Hadroch.’

He glanced past her towards the window. Dawn’s first light was reddening the horizon. ‘Jarret’s death means I can’t be challenged over the Mjollnir any more, but there are people in the Senate who’ll do almost anything, I reckon, to stop us getting hold of what Driscoll found.’

Dakota pushed herself up on one elbow and gazed down at him with a determined expression. ‘Then obviously we need to get on board before that happens,’ she said. ‘We have to take the Mos Hadroch somewhere else.’

‘Where?’

‘Deep into the heart of Emissary territory,’ she told him. A long, long way away.’

‘Take it into Emissary territory.’ Corso stared at her, slack-jawed. ‘You have to be kidding me.’

‘We need to head for a cache located deep inside their territory, which has certain unique vulnerabilities the Mos Hadroch is designed to exploit. We’ll have backup, though: alien weapons, hundreds of them. If it comes down to a confrontation – and it almost certainly will – we should have a good chance of surviving.’

‘And I suppose if I asked where you found these “weapons”, you’d tell me?’

She smiled faintly. ‘Not just yet.’

He groaned and started to haul himself out of the bed.