‘This concerns the command-loss timers mentioned by Dodomi and Dadaeus in the recording,’ Joya said. ‘In the beginning, the two dinosaur powers controlled Leviathan and Luna exactly as we’d expect. Signal stations on their own soil were kept on standby, the idea being that the moment one country was attacked, a remote-control signal would go out from the victim’s station, detonating the antimatter in the attacker’s harbour. But both sides soon realised that there was a flaw in this system. Let us consider this hypothetical scenario: Laurasia suddenly launches a conventional nuclear strike against Gondwana – I use the term “conventional” advisedly, as that is what nuclear weapons are nowadays. With lightning speed, the Laurasians bring overwhelming force to bear on the entirety of Gondwana’s territory, with Gondwana’s command-and-control sites particularly hard hit. Before Gondwana can respond, it sinks into a state of paralysis much like the state it finds itself in now. It cannot detonate Leviathan. Furthermore, Laurasia will have anyway taken certain measures to prevent the detonation signal from ever reaching Leviathan – with strong jamming, for instance – thereby increasing the republic’s chance of victory.

‘To stop this sort of pre-emptive-attack scenario from becoming a reality, the two dinosaur powers, almost simultaneously, put Leviathan and Luna into a new standby mode. This was the so-called command-loss timer. From then on, the two signal stations would no longer transmit a detonation command to the antimatter containment vessel. They would do the opposite. The command they now transmitted stopped the vessel from detonating. Each vessel was set to permanently count down to detonation, and only when it received the interrupt signal from its own side would it interrupt the current countdown and start over, until it received the next interrupt signal. And so on. Those interrupt signals were sent in person by the Laurasian president and the Gondwanan emperor. That way, if either side were to be crippled by a pre-emptive strike, the interrupt signal would not be sent, and the container vessel would detonate the antimatter. This standby mode made a pre-emptive strike tantamount to suicide, as the enemy’s continued existence was now a prerequisite for each country’s own survival. The significant drawback, of course, was that this placed the Earth in greater danger than ever. The command-loss timer is the maddest – or in the supreme consul’s words, the most depraved – deterrence strategy ever conceived.’

A suffocating quiet blanketed the room until eventually Kachika responded. There was an unsteady fluctuation in the intensity of her pheromones. ‘In other words, Leviathan and Luna are standing by for the next interrupt signal right now?’

Joya dipped her antennae. ‘Two signals that may never come.’

‘Meaning that the signal stations in Gondwana and Laurasia have already been destroyed by our mine-grains?’ said Jolie.