Through the lenses of more devices seeded through the ocean surrounding the tower, Trader watched the descent of Commander-of-Shoals’s own private vessel. Its belly cast a deep shadow across the ocean, before plunging deep beneath its surface. It came to a halt on a sub-aquatic plain a few kilometres distant before disgorging its sole occupant.

After that, it was just a matter of waiting.

‘Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals,’ said the Commander once he arrived within the cathedral chamber, ‘I can’t say it’s a pleasure. Why did you pick this . . . place for our meeting?’

‘It used to be a Meridian outpost, Commander,’ he explained. ‘They disappeared off the galactic stage a long time ago, a fact that tends to curb occasional bouts of hubris on my own part.’

‘I see,’ the other Shoal-member replied, clearly unimpressed. ‘I presume you heard about General Desire?’

Desire-for-Violent-Rendering had been Trader’s superior commanding officer. ‘Executed for crimes against the Hegemony,’ Trader replied, noting how the Commander’s manipulators were tipped with razor-sharp steel. ‘Or so I heard.’

‘Oh, it’s quite true. And the same would happen to me if anyone got even an inkling I was here with you. Now why don’t you say whatever it is you have to say, so I can get out of this hell-hole?’

All around the chamber, a thousand tiny but lethal devices armed themselves. ‘I take that to mean you’ve considered my terms?’

Commander-of-Shoals twisted his manipulators in anger. ‘Have you no conception of what’s happened in the last few days? The home world is destroyed, and the Hegemony is on the verge of being torn apart. Do you really think I have any interest in playing these ridiculous games of yours?’

Trader fanned the waters around him with his fins. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘It was hit by asteroids converted for short-range superluminal jumps and accelerated to relativistic speeds. Totally wiped out, Trader.’

‘I . . . I never heard of this,’ Trader stammered. It had been some time since he’d last had an opportunity to check on the progress of the war. ‘The Emissaries?’

‘On the contrary, recidivists who blamed the Deep Dreamers for the war, and didn’t have too much of a moral problem with wiping out a few hundred million of our fellow Shoal-members while they were about it. You can imagine the chaos.’

Trader suddenly remembered General Desire-for-Violent-Rendering telling him the Dreamers had predicted their own demise. ‘I can, yes. I am . . . sorry to hear of this.’

‘Sorry!’ Commander-of-Shoals barked. ‘A plague of fire spreading across the face of the galaxy because you gambled on the Emissaries having no nova-class weaponry, and you’re sorry. I wonder how sorry you’ll feel once the Hegemony’s interrogators get hold of you?’