She then made up for it by screaming abuse at her Freeholder captor at the top of her lungs, even though she knew he almost certainly couldnt hear her from where he sat in the trucks cabin. Which was a shame, because she thought some of the insults shed just come up with were particularly inventive.

She finally slumped down again, her rage and fury replaced by a kind of numb emptiness.

Sifra.

How could he possibly have known she was coming here? Her plan had seemed so simple when she had first worked it out, back on Corkscrew, which lay a hundred and fifty light years distant:

1:Make her way to 82 Eridani, where the world of Redstone was located.

2:Avoid, by any means necessary, actually setting foot on Redstone itself.

3:Wait in one of the outer-system refinery settlements for Avilon to make its scheduled stop in-system.

4:Land on Avilon, bypassing its security protocols with the aid of the override device provided for her by Kazim.

5:Find Bash and rescue him from whatever hole Sifra had squirrelled him away in all these years.

6:Fly to the Wanderer and save the human race from all-too-certain extinction.

An agenda clean and uncomplicated in principle at least. But, as ever, real life in all its complexity had got in the way. Just finding a way to land undetected on Avilon had required the negotiation of numerous deals and also the payment of bribes that had drained her remaining finances. Numerous favours had been called in. And, if not for Kazim, part-owner and investor in several ships used for smuggling sans de sezi as well as being the nearest thing shed had to a friend these past several years, she would never have got even this far.

But, for all her preparations, there had remained the unanswered question of just how the hell she was going to get Bash out of the high-security medical facility he was supposedly being held in. And that, added to her discovery that Sifras reach extended deep inside Avilons global security network, made her job close to impossible.

It then occurred to her that her only remaining option was to admit defeat and turn herself in to Avilons civilian authorities. She might not be able to save Bash, but it was still a hell of a lot better than letting Sifra get his hands on her.

She managed to access the local data-net via her implants and quickly found a responsive AI representing Avilons civilian council. She explained to it that she had been kidnapped and gave a brief description of her abductor and the spider-truck.

A few seconds later, the truck came to a sudden, lurching halt. She heard the hollow thump of a door opening somewhere overhead, then the sound of boots hitting the ground.

The door cracked open once more, and the Freeholder peered in at her, haloed by bright artificial daylight that hurt her eyes.