‘That doesn’t solve the problem of those boats coming our way,’ said Perez. ‘Those things have some serious fucking firepower, Senator, and we haven’t even had a chance to break orbit.’

‘Ted—’ Corso began.

‘I already initiated a hard burn,’ Lamoureaux replied, ‘but it takes time to get a ship this size moving.’

‘Just how long?’

Lamoureaux leaned back against the headrest, his eyes squeezed shut. ‘The drive-spines are currently only at half-charge. That means it’s going to be at least a couple of hours before we’ll be able to jump out of this system. Ah shit, that’s no . . . hang on.’

He leaned forward suddenly, shook his head and blinked his eyes wide. ‘We’ve got two armed corvettes approaching on an intercept course,’ he said. ‘They must have already been in orbit.’

It hit Corso like a punch in the stomach that, without Dakota’s help, they were going to die. Lamoureaux couldn’t save them but, with the aid of her ship, Dakota could. Suddenly their hastily assembled plan to hijack the Mjollnir looked as precarious as a house of cards in an earthquake.

Then he realized something was wrong with Lamoureaux. He sat bent forward in the interface chair, clutching at one side of his head with a pained expression.

Corso stepped forward quickly, catching him before he could fall out of his seat. The navigator’s skin had turned pale and waxy.

‘What the hell is going on?’ said Perez.

‘I don’t know,’ Corso snapped, pulling himself up on to the dais to help Lamoureaux back properly into the seat. ‘Ted, what is it?’

When he replied, Lamoureaux sounded groggy, unfocused. ‘I don’t know. It was like there was this enormous pressure inside my head and . . . oh, damn.’

The bends, thought Corso; his Magi-boosted implants were finally burning out his cortex.

Corso moved out of the way as Lamoureaux leaned forward, and to one side, and vomited noisily on to the deck. Corso held him by the shoulder and ignored the shocked expression on Perez’s face.

‘Where’s Olivarri?’ Corso demanded.

Perez stepped over to another console, and Corso watched Perez’s face change from orange to blue as the console’s display flickered with bright colours. ‘He’s on his way here,’ Perez replied after a moment. ‘I’m reading him as just entering the wheel.’ He reached out and tapped at the screen again. ‘I can activate the external feeds from here.’

A moment later the dark bowl of the bridge’s ceiling filled with stars and with the broad curve of the planet below, along with a simulation of the Mjollnir as it would appear at a distance of a few kilometres. Smoke from the explosion had already been sucked away by the ventilation system.