Corso leaned against a bulkhead and closed his eyes for a moment. They were back in the debriefing room located on the centrifuge. Dakota slumped back in her chair, her eyes puffy and red from too much stress and too little sleep. They had all been working long and hard at getting the last of the systems online.

Tension had hung heavy in the air since Olivarri had been found dead less than twelve hours before, and large parts of the frigate had been declared off-limits. People got on with their jobs, or talked over food in one of the canteens, but it was impossible to miss how they all kept glancing over their shoulders, or the careful way they looked at each other. Corso could feel it too: the sense that nowhere was safe.

‘You know that I have to ask, because no one but you and Ted has the kind of high-level access needed to pull something like this off

She gave him a withering look. ‘Nice to know you’ve got my back, Lucas.’

‘Jesus and Buddha, Dakota, I only just managed to convince Martinez to let me talk to you on my own.’

‘Why? What is it you don’t want him to hear?’

‘For a start, he’s better off not knowing about some of the things that happened at Nova Arctis. It’s a matter of public record that the Uchidans mind-controlled you at Port Gabriel, but if he knew how Trader did it to you a second time, he’d lock you up or throw you out the nearest airlock, and to hell with me or the Mos Hadroch.’

‘And that’s what you think is happening to me?’

Corso felt his face grow hot. ‘I’d be an idiot if I ruled it out.’

She stood up and leaned against the table, facing him obliquely, her arms folded defensively over her chest. ‘Then I’m ruling it out for you. And, in answer to your next question, I’ve barely even spoken to Olivarri, except for the one time we were out on the hull working on some repairs along with Dan.’

‘There’s no possible way Trader could have got to you somehow, without your being aware of it?’

‘Look, what Trader did to me back then was a kind of rape. But he had to get physically close before he could do it. I’d know if he tried anything like that again, and he knows that I’d know.’

‘And yet you said you met him in person, the time he gave you control over the Meridian weapons.’

‘That’s true,’ she nodded, ‘but there still wasn’t any direct or even indirect contact of any kind. Certainly nothing physically passed from him to me in any way.’

‘But it doesn’t always have to be physical, does it?’