She nodded mutely, and realized she had no idea just how much time had passed since the red giant had turned nova. It might have been days, or weeks, or much more.

‘I don’t know what it is you want, Trader, but there are a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t listen to anything you have to say.’

‘And yet here you are.’

I didn’t ask to come here, damn you. ‘The last time I saw you was on Morgan’s World. You already knew about the Mos Hadroch, didn’t you?’

‘In this I must confess my guilt,’ Trader replied smoothly.

‘You could have just told me, and then I never would have needed to go out there.’

‘But I had little more than a name at that time, Dakota. You found out more than I ever did when I myself visited the swarm long ago. You even managed to find a possible location.’

Dakota felt her hands twitch with barely suppressed anger. ‘If I could, I’d kill you, Trader. I’d . . .’

Her heart was hammering, and she felt on the verge of a panic attack. Too much was happening too soon.

She slumped down on the slick black glass extending underfoot, and listened to the wet slap of water against the platform’s edge. ‘Why here?’ she asked, looking briefly around. ‘I mean, what is this place?’

‘This world?’ Trader turned slowly within his sphere of water, glancing from side to side. ‘Its occupants have long since passed on, as you may have guessed. There was a time when the civilization that built these towers strode amid the stars. They had an empire of a kind that stretched across thousands of light-years. Their name for themselves might be loosely translated as “Meridians”.’

‘So what happened to them?’

Trader’s manipulators wriggled under his body. ‘They never discovered a Maker cache until it was much too late and their culture had become terminally fragmented. Before that, they learned the secret of exceptionally long life and journeyed aboard ships that crawled between the stars at sublight speeds. One branch of the species became aquatic, while the rest remained air-breathers; the reasons why remain unknown. These towers are emblematic of happier times, when the two sides coexisted relatively peacefully, but eventually they tore themselves apart. They could not destroy stars as effectively as you or I might, but they certainly had the means to shatter worlds. If they had survived to face the Shoal Hegemony, they would have presented us with a formidable challenge.’

‘So does that have anything to do with why you chose this place?’

‘They left behind weapons of the most remarkable power. Weapons that we will need, Miss Merrick, when we begin our journey.’

Dakota stared up at the alien. ‘“Journey”?’