‘The video you’re about to see was made before the Mos Hadroch was removed from the lab, obviously,’ Corso explained. ‘Dan came across several crushed fab-manufactured cameras, while the rest of us were out searching the ship. He’s found a few more since, still intact and apparently deliberately hidden in secluded parts of the lab where you wouldn’t find them unless you looked pretty hard. Dan also found some video files that Whitecloud had apparently deliberately distributed through the ship’s stacks. Run the first one, Ted.’ The image jerked into life.

As Dakota watched, the Mos Hadroch appeared to explode in extreme slow motion, glittering shards diverging outwards from its central mass and twisting slightly as they did so. The central core – the artefact itself – was meanwhile changing shape, seeming to twist apart and then fold in on itself every few seconds, in a way that challenged her senses. It literally hurt her eyes to watch.

There were hints of what might be shadows, as if the artefact were trapped at the centre of a tangle of struts and mechanisms, most of which were invisible, or very close to invisible. An eerie and overwhelmingly alien throbbing accompanied these contortions.

She finally tore her gaze away and pressed her fingers to her eyes. When she looked back up, Lamoureaux had stopped the video.

‘We also found this,’ said Lamoureaux. ‘Lucas?’

‘Run it, Ted.’

A new video began. This time Whitecloud stared into the lens of the lab’s main console, a wild look about his eyes.

‘My name – my real name – is Ty Whitecloud,’ he announced. ‘I suspect I may be dead by the time you see this. The files accompanying this message include a command structure I believe can be used to control the artefact. I . . .’

The image jerked momentarily as Lamoureaux jumped it forward.

‘. . . artefact is composed of some form of non-baryonic material imbued with a highly self-organizing principle, possibly hylozoic in nature, in essence a classical model of a Wheeler-Korsh engine. This is the only way I can begin to comprehend the nature of the communication between myself and the Mos Hadroch.’

‘Communication?’ exclaimed Perez.

Dakota sat up, her fatigue suddenly forgotten.

‘What you must understand is that the Mos Hadroch is more than just a simple weapon. It will not function for just anyone who happens to come into possession of it. If the communication I shared with it is anything to judge by, it is entirely capable of making its own decisions. It knows everything about us – about the Shoal, their war with the Emissaries, our purpose in being here.’

‘He’s babbling,’ said Perez. ‘None of this makes any sense.’

‘Shut up,’ said Corso.