Someone who merely claimed they worked for the Consortium, Ty reflected. He stared at the ring on his finger as if seeing it for the first time. He had a sudden, overwhelming sense that there was something he needed to remember.

‘Ty, I swear, nobody from my side has approached you before now. I can guarantee that.’

Then who the hell . . . ?

Ty suddenly felt a deep terror grip hold of him. He pushed roughly past Olivarri, the sudden motion sending the other man sprawling.

Ty collided with the door, and clumsily pulled himself through, and kept going, caroming from side to side as he made his way down a passageway leading towards the nearest transport station. Only once he had reached it, and climbed inside a car, did he finally come to a halt, lungs aching breathlessly.

He glanced frequently out through the car’s open door towards the hub entrance, but there was no sign yet that Olivarri had followed him.

Ty was seized by a crippling pain in his head and he doubled over, gripping his skull and crying out at the unexpectedness of it. As he squeezed his eyes tight shut, he saw a tiny but intense flash of light in his peripheral vision, and . . .

The next thing he knew, he was still inside the transport car, but his hands were grimy and his body stank of sweat like he had never once taken a shower.

There was something he had to remember . . . something important.

But, however hard he tried, it wouldn’t come back to him.

Chapter Twenty-four

The Mjollnir jumped again only seven hours later, before dropping back into space several hundred light-years closer to the edge of the Orion Arm. Ahead lay the region of the Long War, the main battleground of the Shoal’s fifteen-thousand-year conflict with the Emissaries, and beyond that the Perseus Arm.

Once the all-clear had sounded, Lamoureaux climbed back out of the interface chair and nodded to Corso.

‘We’re pushing it with these jumps, Lucas. Too many and too often. This ship wasn’t designed for that kind of stress.’

Corso glanced towards him. ‘Objection noted,’ he replied, and returned his attention to the console before him.

Lamoureaux thought of saying something more, then changed his mind and left the bridge: there was no point telling Corso what he almost certainly already knew. More than twenty drive-spines had failed this time. New ones were already being manufactured, but if they kept failing at this rate the Mjollnir’s jump capacity was going to be seriously compromised.

Ty had paused in his work when the jump alert sounded, waiting quietly until the all-clear followed a minute later.