‘These are the current confirmed sightings of Emissary forces,’ Lamoureaux explained. A few dozen more points now appeared, coloured yellow. ‘And these,’ he continued, ‘are stars that have gone nova since the war escalated. You can see they’re mostly centred on the region of the Long War, but there’s been more detonations deeper inside our arm, and getting closer to Consortium territory.’

‘Any word from Ocean’s Deep?’ asked Corso.

‘They’re in total disarray, Senator. The Legislate’s taken up a large military presence in the orbital station and rounded up a lot of the key Authority staff for questioning. Most of this news comes through Bandati contacts, rather than from our own people. It’s the same at Tierra – no news coming in or out.’

‘I think,’ declared Corso, ‘it’s time everyone stopped calling me “Senator”. From now on “Lucas” will do just fine, don’t you think?’

‘Then I guess you’d all better start calling me “Eduard”.’

They all turned to see Martinez standing at the entrance to the bridge. Corso started to rise, but Martinez gestured him to sit back down.

‘I’m fine. Leave me be,’ Martinez insisted, shuffling forward. He was walking with a stick, Dakota noticed. He stopped when he spotted her, staring at her like she was a ghost.

‘Sir, are you absolutely certain you’re ready to be out of treatment?’

‘Why, yes I am, Lucas,’ Martinez replied, still without taking his eyes off her. ‘I just have to go easy. Maybe spend another night in the medbox to speed up the healing.’

He moved closer to her. ‘So you’re Dakota Merrick. When the hell did you get on board? And where the hell were you when we were getting ready to . . .’

‘Commander,’ Corso interrupted. He had come to Martinez’s side and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘As soon as we’re finished here, we’ll go to your quarters and I’ll explain everything.’ He gestured towards a couch. ‘Please.’

Martinez looked like he was struggling to control his temper. ‘Then you’d better make your reasons good,’ he replied tautly, and headed for the seat.

A priority comms icon appeared, floating just to one side of the galaxy simulation. Corso reached up to his ear and spoke quietly into the air for a few moments.

‘Nancy just reported in,’ he explained, once he had finished. ‘If we’re going to make a significant jump any time during the next couple of days, we’re going to have to leave up to a quarter of the drive-spines offline.’

‘That’s not good,’ said Martinez.

Corso shrugged. ‘Not much we can do about it. The engineers hadn’t finished work on the hull when we boarded. Dan’s ready to start running out replacement drive-spines as soon as he’s got the fabricators back online.’