Dakota didn’t move towards the car. ‘Nancy, why are you here? It’s meant to be just me and Trader going down to the planet surface. Whose idea was this?’

‘Martinez.’

The two women regarded each other with the keen attention of soldiers on opposite sides in a war caught in the same foxhole.

Ted, are you getting this?

<Sorry. Not my idea,> he sent back.

Dakota shook her head with a sigh and stepped past Nancy and into the car. Schiller followed a moment later, her mouth set in a thin line, and pulled herself into the couch facing her. The car began to accelerate down the transit tube, heading for the stern.

‘I know you don’t like me,’ Dakota said carefully, ‘but if we’re going down there together, you’re going to have to at least try and be civil. We’re all on the same side.’

‘What about whoever killed Olivarri?’ Nancy replied. ‘Whose side are they on?’

Dakota shook her head, as if to say I give up, and stared fixedly at the ceiling for the remainder of their short journey, feeling disproportionately grateful when the car slid into the station closest to the main hold. As they reached the airlock bay, they found a dozen spider-mechs waiting, floating patiently just to one side.

‘What do we need those for?’ asked Nancy.

‘For grunt work,’ Dakota replied, noting with approval that the spiders had been modified for low-gravity work, as she had requested. ‘We’re going to be doing a lot of lifting and carrying, according to Trader, so we’re going to need them. You want more details, ask him when you meet him.’

‘Huh.’ Nancy headed to the nearest rack and pulled down a pressure suit.

Trader’s yacht was, for the first time, linked to the frigate via a pressurized tube. As before, Dakota herself did not bother with a pressure suit. Once Nancy was ready, Dakota hit the cycle button on the airlock door, and then waited until the safety light turned green and the door hissed open. The spiders followed them in, unfurling their arms to push themselves away from the sides of the tube and into the yacht’s interior.

Trader had already drained his vessel’s liquid atmosphere, in anticipation of their arrival, but the damp air still had a briny scent to it that made Dakota think of sunken wrecks and weed-strewn shorelines. The chamber they currently found themselves in was barely capacious enough to hold the two of them, all twelve of the spider-mechs, and a tiny, glowing, insect-sized device that hovered before them for a few moments before darting away around a corner.

Dakota glanced at Nancy, then nodded towards the departing beacon. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

‘You first,’ Nancy muttered uneasily.