‘That something is me, Ted. I don’t know what it is or how he did it, but a man called Hugh Moss planted something on me. Not even my Magi ship realized it was there. While you’re running the drones, I’m going to get on board that lander and use it to draw the scouts away from the frigate. That way you’ll have a better way of staying alive, while I can go after Trader. Nobody else needs to be down there at the cache but me, anyway.’

‘Dakota, no.’

‘For God’s sake, Ted! I need to do this. I need to put an end to it all.’ She could feel tears prickling the corners of her eyes.

‘We should wait for the others to get here. Besides . . .’ He shook his head. ‘No, this is beyond just crazy. Even if you’re determined to go down there on your own, nobody’s going to be mad enough to let you.’

Her expression became icy calm. ‘Don’t get in my way, Ted, or I’ll shut down the drones. The frigate would be left totally defenceless.’

He swallowed. ‘I’d reactivate them.’

‘But it might take you too long. There are already things out there trying to burrow their way through the hull.’

‘I don’t think you’d—’

‘Try me, Ted.’

She watched him studying her, trying to make up his mind whether she was serious.

‘You’re out of your mind,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s what they’ve all been saying, and I defended you. But they were right, Dakota. You’re out of your fucking mind.’

‘Don’t let anyone come after me. Do you understand me?’

He stared back at her in silence, filled with impotent fury, as she turned and ran down the passageway.

Trader’s yacht had utilized a maximum-evasion pattern as it descended towards the surface of the cache-world, but it had still suffered enormous damage from the ground-based defences. Once his ship had dropped into the cache’s main shaft and begun its descent deep below the planet’s surface, however, the shooting stopped.

Thousands of passageways had been cut into the rock all the way down the shaft. Before very long, Trader guided his yacht to a landing in one specific passageway where he knew he would find the cache’s drive-forge. Once he had exited his ship, he took a moment to approach the lip of the passageway, in order to gaze down into the abyssal depths below.

Rows of lights descended the shaft’s smooth walls, all the way down to where they appeared to converge tens of kilometres below his vantage point. On the far side of the shaft he saw a city-sized factory complex imbued with that same ineluctable air of decay and abandonment.