Trader swivelled to look at her directly. <To continue our conversation, you are, of course, aware that there are sophisticated means by which cultures much more advanced than your own can track individuals across enormous distances.>

I don’t know what you mean.

<Of course you do. It’s how Hugh Moss chased me all across the galaxy. Don’t you realize he doesn’t want us to succeed? The Emissaries are winning. The Shoal is retreating, world after world destroyed. You can’t imagine how many lives have been lost already.

Nothing would please that monster more than to see us all die, so it was hardly surprising that he might place a similar form of tracking technology on your own person. Something so small and undetectable you would never find it. Then, my dear Dakota, he gave the means of tracking you to our enemies, the Emissaries.>

Dakota remembered how Moss had touched her shoulder back on Derinkuyu, and the way his touch had stung.

You’re lying. There’s no way you could possibly know all this.

<I am not so alone in my endeavours as you seem to imagine. I still have those whom I can trust to supply me with certain intelligence, otherwise Moss would have found and destroyed me long ago. But the final proof that the Emissaries have a means of tracking you lies in the ease with which they found us here, out of all the vastness of this spiral arm. I cannot believe those scouts hidden in the cache were anything other than a trap carefully laid in anticipation of your arrival. The only course of action then left to me is to take the Mos Hadroch far away from yourself and the frigate, in order to preserve it.>

This is bullshit. You were always planning to steal it.

<Once our mission here was finished I intended to return it to the Hegemony for safe-keeping, that much is true. Perhaps, if you survive this day, you will eventually come to understand that the Mos Hadroch is far too precious to be allowed to remain in the hands of a fledgling and barbaric race such as your own. The Emissaries’ attention will be on the frigate or, more precisely, on you, while a much smaller ship like my own may be able to slip past their defences.>

A hatch began to slide open in the side of Trader’s ship, and he moved towards it.

Wait. . .

<Goodbye, Dakota. I did not come to this decision lightly>

The hull of Trader’s yacht closed behind him as he slipped back inside. Flickering lightning began to form around the tips of its drive-spines.