Trader’s manipulators wriggled suddenly with what Dakota suspected might be delight. ‘On the contrary, the means of operating the Mos Hadroch has been available to me for a very long time. I acquired that knowledge long ago, on a journey to the Magellanic Clouds. A most sorrowful place it is, too: a graveyard of stars, one might say. There is life there, though sparse, living amongst the ruins of dead empires whose descendants can barely perceive the heights to which they once aspired. How ironic that the weapon I travelled so far to find should turn out to be so close to our own territory.’

‘You mentioned something about a “journey”. But a journey to where?’

‘Why, to the heart of the Emissary empire, of course. In order to implement the Mos Hadroch in the way for which it was designed, we must penetrate the Maker cache from which they have derived the majority of their power.’

This has to be one of his tricks, she decided. ‘You’re fucking kidding me.’

‘An amusing conceit, is it not? You must excuse my lack of transparency concerning the method of its activation, but we find ourselves in a situation where each of us may gain from the other. You must believe me, Dakota, when I tell you the Mos Hadroch must be taken to a particular cache before it can be deployed. It then exploits what one might call certain weaknesses in the design of the caches in order to achieve its full effect.’

Beyond the tower, the sun was sinking towards the horizon. Dakota’s buttocks felt numb and sore from squatting on the platform. ‘This just sounds like more bullshit, Trader,’ she told the alien bluntly.

‘You are free to doubt my words, as you are free to fly off and never encounter me again.’

Trader’s yacht pinged her with a request to pass on data. She accepted it, but not without aggressively filtering it first to make sure she wouldn’t encounter any nasty surprises before accessing it.

She stared at him after she had finished studying the data contained. ‘You’re serious? That’s what it can do?’

‘Impressive, yes?’

‘If it’s true. Look, it’s what you’re nottelling me that worries me. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, we get hold of this . . . this thing and fly it into Emissary territory. I’ve seen one of their godkillers in action, and I don’t have any problem believing they’d wipe us out long before we got anywhere near one of their caches, even if we had a fleet of ships.’

‘I’ve already mentioned the necessity of arming ourselves. The Meridians were most skilled in the art of war, and any one of their weapons would be a match for an entire fleet of human craft.’

Dakota stood up again. ‘You haven’t exactly made it clear what you’re getting out of this yourself.’