‘Look, Senator,’ said Perez, ‘I’m not necessarily counselling surrender, but if they do fire on us, they could cripple us, or a lot worse.’

Corso shook his head and licked suddenly dry lips. ‘No. We keep going. Don’t respond to their messages.’

‘They’re getting ready to fire on us,’ Perez retorted, growing visibly angrier and stepping out from behind the console, with bunched fists. ‘They’re letting us see their targeting systems to make sure we know exactly what they’re intending. Senator, if we don’t signal them now and agree—’

Perez stopped abruptly at a sudden bright flare of light from the overhead display. Corso looked up to see that several pale spheres had now appeared between the frigate and the two approaching corvettes.

Except the corvettes weren’t there anymore.

‘What—?’ Perez stopped and turned back to the console, staring down at its softly glowing surface as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘They just . . . hang on.’

Perez replayed what had just happened. They both watched as bright beams of light flickered out from the spheres, tearing the two ships apart.

Dakota entered the bridge at that same moment, looking breathless. Perez stared up again at the overhead display, then at her, clearly putting two and two together.

‘Tell me everything I need to know,’ she said, stopping briefly to draw breath at the edge of the dais supporting the interface chair.

‘We’re breaking orbit,’ Corso told her. She dropped her bag on the floor next to the dais and pulled herself up and into the interface chair. ‘But it’s taking too long,’ he warned.

Dakota nodded, and Corso watched the intense way her small white fists gripped the chair’s armrests.

She closed her eyes and for a few moments fought to steady her breathing, then nodded tightly. ‘I’m going to ramp the drive up for a premature jump. If we can get out of range of the orbital defence systems, we might be able to take our time before making a longer jump.’

Corso watched as the petals surrounding the interface chair began to fold up around it, surrounding Dakota in silent darkness. He could feel the frigate’s acceleration beginning to bite. Much like the Mjollnir’s sister-ships, its centrifuge could be spun down during periods in which it was performing an extended hard burn, when each of the living spaces contained within it rotated on massive hydraulics so that the acceleration provided a comfortable level of gravity. When the acceleration ceased and zero gee returned, the centrifuge could once again be spun up.

He glanced back up at the projected starscape. The Magi ship that had brought Dakota to the frigate was slipping out of range. It was also beginning to slowly spin as if out of control, edging towards the delicate filigree of the orbital dock the Mjollnir had now left behind. Something was wrong.

Dakota.

Her eyelids trembled, then opened on to nothing.