It was still difficult for Ty to think back to his days developing military technologies for the Uchidans; conscripted or not, he had allowed himself to be sufficiently drawn into his work that it became easy to ignore the potential human cost of their research, while helping his fellow scientists develop a variety of possible means by which neural implants could be attacked or compromised. One in particular had involved the use of the body’s own bio-electric field as a conduit for signals that could overcome or suppress the flow of information in implants – except that, in order to work, whatever affected the bio-electric field had to remain in constant contact with the target’s own body. This, in turn, had led to the development of hardware-based neural-feedback mechanisms that could manipulate the neuro-chemical balance of the target’s brain, eliciting powerful negative emotions or even generating escalating levels of pain and distress that could prove ultimately deadly.

Something like a cheap data-ring could do the job. And whoever was behind the avatar had somehow figured out how to use Ty’s own research against him.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Eleven days out from Redstone, Dakota made her way to one of the airlock bays. She was surprised to find Nancy Schiller there, along with Ted Lamoureaux.

Lamoureaux nodded guardedly to her. Nancy, on the other hand, was doing her level best to ignore both of them.

‘I thought Dan was scheduled for this crew,’ Dakota said cautiously. Since Schiller herself was in charge of scheduling the repair shifts, she had so far arranged them so that she had never once had to work on the same crew as Dakota.

Nancy didn’t look up while she ran her spacesuit’s auto-diagnostics. ‘Yeah, he was, but something else came up.’

‘You know, me and Ted could probably handle this just fine with only the two of us,’ said Dakota.

Nancy finally raised her head and flashed her a look of contempt. ‘I don’t think so,’ she barked. ‘Just get suited up, all right?’

Dakota pushed her way over to one of the racks and grabbed a suit.

What happened to Dan? Dakota sent.

<There’s been a big increase in Emissary transmissions since our last jump,> Lamoureaux replied. <It’s a lot of tach-net traffic for such a low-density region, and Martinez wanted him up on the bridge while they try and figure out the reason why>

There’s an increase in Emissary tach-net traffic because we just jumped straight past the Long War and deep into the gap between spiral arms, remember? So that means they have to boost their signals all the way from the Perseus Arm, and we’re just picking up stray long-range transmissions. It doesn’t actually mean there’s more Emissaries out there any closer at hand.