A helicopter passed over the prison, the sound of its blades dopplering as it descended towards a nearby landing pad. The muffled sounds of men shouting and trucks pulling up outside continued unabated day and night.

‘Would you like to know how we found you so quickly?’ asked Kosac, his grin increasingly feral.

Ty cleared his throat, his mouth suddenly dry and his tongue feeling heavy. ‘I assumed it was the blood sample.’

Kosac frowned. ‘Blood sample?’

‘A doctor took it from me at a clinic. I assumed you were running automatic gene-profiling and matched it to a sample that was taken from me before I was due to be handed over by the Uchidans.’

Enlightenment crossed Kosac’s face. ‘Ah! I see. No, on the contrary, we picked up a friend of yours a couple of months back. Ilsa Padel – you know her?’

Ty nodded, a terrible feeling of inevitability beginning to overcome him.

‘She tried to exit the coreship along with a group of refugees. She almost got past us before we figured out who she was. She was extremely helpful when it came to identifying key members of General Peralta’s senior staff in return for certain concessions. Even if we didn’t have the blood sample, Mr Whitecloud, it was still only a matter of time. And hiding right there in the clinic! Well,’ – Kosac shook his head as if sorrowful, ‘that was always going to make it easy for us, wasn’t it?’

Ty slumped back against the wall. ‘I see.’

Ilsa. Few others could have had the opportunity to betray him so thoroughly. Apart from her, only Peralta had been aware of his true identity. Ty felt a tide of bitter melancholy well up as he remembered all the times he had searched for her, unaware she had already bartered him for a more comfortable cell or a shorter sentence.

His first sight of the barracks had been at dawn. The block-shaped prison building was tucked into one corner of a large fenced compound belonging to the permanent Consortium military presence stationed in the coreship. Rover-units with heavy armaments mounted on their backs surrounded it, while supply trucks and transports constantly arrived or departed. The corridors within teemed with black-suited troopers, their faces more often than not hidden behind visors.

His first night in this cell had convinced him that he would not survive to see the morning. The single window above the toilet bowl looked out over a courtyard surrounded by a high concrete wall. An automated gun-tower equipped with IR and motion sensors stood on a skeletal tripod in one corner of the courtyard, while most of the rest of it was stacked with pallets containing emergency supplies, the spaces in between forming narrow corridors.