‘That occurred to me too, but now I think it was vandalized for exactly the reason we originally thought it was – so someone couldn’t be scanned for compromised neural implants. But not you or Ted.’

Dakota smiled and shook her head. ‘That’s ridiculous. If there was another machine-head on board, I’d have known straight away.’

Corso smiled softly. ‘Dakota, our friend Driscoll is a Uchidanist.’

‘A Uchidanist? Why are you only telling me now?’

‘Because I need your help,’ Corso replied miserably. ‘I’m sure he’s under Trader’s control.’

‘How?’

‘Remember, Uchidanists have—’

‘Implants,’ she finished for him. ‘Oh, Jesus and Buddha. But that still doesn’t necessarily prove he’s responsible, does it?’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘For that, you need evidence.’ He reached up to the car’s list of programmable destinations. ‘Let’s get going. There’s something I want you to see.’

She looked at him suspiciously. ‘What?’

‘The evidence,’ he said simply. ‘But before we get there, there’s something else I’m going to have to tell you about Driscoll. And you’re not going to like it.’

The frigate’s reactor complexes were surrounded by a maze of access tubes narrow and cramped enough to induce any number of claustrophobic nightmares in the minds of anyone traversing them. Corso led the way, once they disembarked, relying on the detailed maps placed at each junction to help him navigate his way to one of the reactor bays.

Dakota followed close behind, a knot of apprehension twisting in her stomach, her mind still numb with shock from what she’d just learned. Before long they reached the main control area for the frigate’s fusion-reaction systems. A screen mounted on one bulkhead showed a real time simulation of the fantastically violent processes taking place just a few metres away.

‘I still can’t believe you kept this from me for so long,’ she mumbled, watching as Corso stepped over to a service hatch set into the bulkhead. He entered a code into a panel beside the hatch, and after a few moments it swung open.

‘We’ve been over this before,’ he replied testily. ‘If I can find a way to work with Whitecloud without throttling him, so can you.’

Dakota didn’t reply at first. In truth, what Corso had told her on the way still hadn’t quite sunk in.

Whitecloud was, whether directly or indirectly, one of the men ultimately responsible for everything that had gone wrong in her life. The Port Gabriel incident had led to the banning of machine-head technology, and that had led to Dakota working for Bourdain – and that had led, one way and another, to Nova Arctis, and finally to the Mjollnir.

‘I want him dead,’ she announced, her voice wavering.

Corso was halfway inside the hatch as he glanced back at her. ‘But we need him alive,’ he said, with a warning in his tone.