‘Bridge of Mjollnir to the approaching shuttles,’ spoke a voice in Corso’s ear. ‘We need to confirm the details of your manifest. Who am I speaking to?’

Corso glanced at the three other figures seated behind him in the supply shuttle. Like him, they all wore bulky armoured spacesuits, although for the moment they had left their helmets off. He saw Leo Olivarri, Eduard Martinez and Dan Perez. Perez had been the Mjollnir’s head of engineering until, like Nancy Schiller, he had been removed from his job for remaining loyal to Martinez.

Olivarri’s boss, Ray Willis, was on a second shuttle following a parallel course to their own, which also carried Ted Lamoureaux, Nancy and Ty Whitecloud. The three members of the frigate’s crew remained completely unaware that the man they knew as Nathan Driscoll was operating under an assumed identity.

Perez signalled with one hand, and Corso put the Mjollnir link on standby.

‘Your name is Herera,’ Perez instructed Corso. ‘Victor Herera.’

‘Why the hell is he asking?’

Perez shrugged. ‘It’ll be nothing more than a standard security precaution. And it’s probably just shitty luck they picked on us.’

Corso reopened the comms link. ‘Sorry, bridge, we’re getting random system glitches. You’re talking to Captain Herera, manifest five alpha zero.’ He then added, ‘Any problems up there?’

‘No problems,’ replied a bored-sounding voice at the other end. ‘Security’s been moved up a couple of notches this morning.’

‘Any idea why?’ Corso kept his voice casual.

‘Damned if I know, but we’re requesting you to dock at Bay Three, not Four. Sorry about that. Over and out.’

Corso cut the link and turned to look at the men behind him. ‘Do you think they’ve worked out who we are?’

Perez’s reply was blunt and to the point. ‘If they had, Senator, we’d already be dead.’

Corso nodded and turned to face the viewscreens once more, while trying to ignore the tension growing in his chest.

Whatever lingering doubts Corso still harboured about the Senate’s intentions had vanished a few nights earlier, when Marcus Kenley had appeared at his Senate lodgings in a stolen taxi, its electronic brain hacked in order to prevent it from revealing either its occupant or its whereabouts. He brought with him the news that several of Corso’s supporters in the Senate had been arrested during the past hour.

Corso had dressed in a hurry, and then discovered Kenley had also hacked the taxi’s speed limiter, as the little vehicle accelerated with frightening speed, almost flipping on to its side at a sharp turn.

Following Jarret’s defeat in the challenge, Kenley had been instrumental in setting up safe-houses around Unity, and before long they arrived at a colonial-style building on the outskirts of town. It was a huddle of old-fashioned pressure-domes like something out of a historical ’viro.