Lamoureaux laughed, and then coughed. ‘That’s exactly what she told me. The Emissaries are tracking her, not the frigate. That’s all I can tell you.’

‘He’s telling the truth.’ Martinez nodded towards the overhead display, which still tracked the ongoing engagement. ‘The scouts are breaking away and going after the lander.’

Corso stared up at it, too, with a stricken expression. ‘She’ll never make it.’

Lamoureaux staggered upright and pulled himself back into the interface chair.

Martinez let go of Corso and stepped over to Lamoureaux, handing him a handkerchief. Ted took it from him with mumbled thanks.

‘Dan, keep an eye on Mr Corso here. If he tries taking a swing at anyone else, find somewhere to lock him up. Meanwhile, Mr Lamoureaux, I want you to do some calculations. Work out how long you think we have left before the star blows, and how much power we’ll need to jump out of the vicinity in time, before it does.’

‘She’s abandoned us,’ Corso muttered, half to himself.

‘Don’t be so sure,’ said Martinez. ‘I’d say she’s given us some breathing room. Ted, put her current trajectory and location on the overhead.’

An image of the cache-world and its star appeared overhead, complete with outsized representations of both the Mjollnir and the lander, the latter already fast approaching the planet’s surface.

Lamoureaux’s reply was muffled by the handkerchief pressed to his face. ‘If she can stay alive long enough, she should reach the cache itself in about fifteen minutes.’

The lander received a direct hit that sent it spinning so hard that Dakota was almost ripped out of her seat restraints. A sudden roar blanketed out the whine and screech of the bulkheads as the atmosphere vented, while her filmsuit enveloped her instantly.

Prior to this, dozens of direct hits and near-misses had finally overwhelmed one of the two field-generators attached to the lander. Apart from her filmsuit, the only thing between her and certain death was a couple of Meridian drones she had peeled away from the main pack. She had been worried Lamoureaux might not allow her control over them, but in the end he hadn’t tried to stop her.

On the screen, she could see the cache growing bigger as she dropped towards it. According to the signal she was still picking up from Trader’s yacht, he was more than thirty kilometres directly down the throat of the shaft.

Something about the thought of descending into that bottomless hole made her skin prickle with terror.

Down, down, down she went, the cache expanding towards Dakota like a wide and hungry mouth.

More pulse-beam fire blasted out from defensive structures scattered around the mouth of the cache. The lander spun under another direct hit, and alert messages flared across her screens.