‘Because it was going to emerge sooner or later, and I’d rather you heard it from me. We’re all going to have to make compromises if we’re to have a hope in hell of getting out of this mess alive.’

‘What compromises?’

‘I need you to keep working with Whitecloud.’

She stared at him, totally appalled. ‘You’ve got to be fucking joking.’

‘If he’s close to some kind of a real breakthrough, you’re going to have to. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve talked with him about what happened at Port Gabriel. He doesn’t deny his responsibility for what happened, and I’m not saying he’s any less guilty, but I’m beginning to think he’s genuinely contrite.’

A sick, acid feeling was building in the pit of her stomach. ‘Oh, that’s okay then,’ she snapped. ‘No problem. Let bygones be bygones, right?’

Corso bristled. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

She stared off past his shoulder for a moment, thinking. ‘Look, putting all of that aside just for the moment, one thing occurs to me. If he’s under Trader’s control, why did he tell you he’d made a breakthrough? Wouldn’t that be against Trader’s own interests?’

‘Trader didn’t control your actions every second of every day, did he?’

‘Well, no,’ she conceded.

‘I think it’s the same with Whitecloud. That means he’s his own man at least some of the time.’ He nodded towards the jury-rigged chair. ‘All this tells us is that Trader’s planning something and, whatever it turns out to be, we’re probably not going to like it.’

Chapter Thirty-two

Another jump, at only 50 per cent capacity, carried the Mjollnir several hundred light-years further across the gulf separating the spiral arms. The Perseus Arm grew to fill more of the sky, while patterns of dust and light began to reveal themselves to the Mjollnir’s crew over the next several days, as they worked to keep the frigate’s jump capacity above a certain critical level.

Ty’s dreams became stranger and more frequent whenever he slept, sometimes almost taking on the nature of visions. At one point he dreamt that a powerful storm roared out of the Mos Hadroch, where it sat in its cradle, commanding him in a voice expressed in the form of thunder and gales.

Now she was back on board, the prognosis for Nancy was far from good; the radiation had caused deep and irreversible cellular damage. He found he dreamt of her also, suited and tumbling out of his reach, until she was lost in the depths of interstellar space. He had visited her in the med-bay a couple of times, and gazed at her through the transparent lid of her medbox, wishing his need for her could somehow bring her closer to life.