‘Tell me everything you know about Moss,’ Dakota asked at one point.

‘He turned up here slightly less than five weeks ago and established himself extremely rapidly. It’s my understanding that he trains what are intended to be either bodyguards or assassins, depending on your source of information. Killers, certainly,’ Rivers added, as they hurtled on.

‘Assassins? But to assassinate who?’

‘Well, at first the rumours were that Moss was training soldiers to act as protection for black marketeers in Derinkuyu. Then it turned out he was killing off all the black marketeers instead, and taking over in their place. Keep in mind,’ he added, ‘that much of this remains mere rumour and conjecture. He also supposedly has some arrangement with a tribe of second-stage Skelites living in burrows at a much lower level than this one. It’s believed he’s aiding them in their war with a neighbouring tribe.’

‘What do you mean by “second-stage” Skelites?’

‘Skelites go through three distinct stages of development during their lives. The first stage is born in pools of volcanically heated water on the surface. Those who survive go on to stage two, which is large, aggressive, extremely territorial and technologically innovative, though their existence is spent mostly in subterranean burrows like these. Those who survive their constant wars then enter a third stage, where they return to the surface and spend the rest of their existence reproducing and engaging in what I guess you might call intellectual pursuits.’ He glanced briefly at Dakota. ‘The second-stage Skelites are the only ones who have any contact with other species. And, of course, they’re the ones who are demanding their own starships, since—’

Rivers never got to finish his sentence.

Dakota was not immediately aware that there had been an explosion – or that the car they were riding in had been pushed up from the floor of a tunnel with sufficient force to catapult it several metres into the air. Instead she now found herself some distance away from the car’s burning wreckage, with no clear memory of how she had got from there to here. There were distant screams and shouts, and small fires blazed dimly through a spreading cloud of black smoke.

She sat up, looking down to see that the black liquid of her filmsuit had spilled out to protect her. Her clothes were torn and ragged, but she herself wasn’t even scratched.

She jumped up and ran back to the wrecked vehicle.