Mersadie shook her head. A sudden feeling had flooded her, drowning the relief she had felt when the ship had answered their distress call. She had come to as the shuttle spun through a void filled with the flash of explosions, racing towards the promise of a sanctuary. Now the sudden quiet of the hangar after the outer doors had closed on the fire-touched void somehow felt more threatening than the light of battle and the flare of dying ships.

Nilus frowned, the expression creasing around the metal plate riveted to his forehead.

‘What?’ he asked.

The hatch touched the deck outside.

‘Out!’ came the hard command. ‘If you have weapons in your hands, we will shoot. If you do not comply, we will shoot.’

Mersadie took a deep breath, raised her hands and walked out into the light.

The hangar outside was small, a box of weathered metal just large enough to take the shuttle and leave space for the group of figures that waited for them. There were five: two nervous-looking troopers in blue-and-silver uniforms, which were too clean for them to have seen much use; a very tall woman in black and grey; another woman in a blue and gold-braid uniform Mersadie could not place; and lastly a heavy-framed man with polished-walnut skin. Bonded opals dotted his forehead, and his eyes were cautious. One of the troopers shifted his grip on his shotgun.

‘Who are you?’ snapped the woman in the blue and gold-braid uniform.

‘You’re the captain of this ship?’ asked Mersadie.

‘This is smelling more wrong by the second,’ snarled the uniformed woman at the heavyset man.

‘Please,’ said Mersadie. ‘I need to speak to your captain.’

The very tall woman raised a hand. She had barely moved since Mersadie had exited the shuttle. The woman’s face was old, but there was a strength to it and a sharpness to her gaze that reminded Mersadie of a sword’s edge.

‘That shuttle is a Corona-class lander,’ said the tall woman, carefully, without looking away from them. ‘Well-maintained and armed, but with no markings. Military or paramilitary, but look at her clothing.’ The woman pointed a long finger at Mersadie. ‘Worn, utilitarian, nothing metallic even on the fastenings, alphanumerics stitched into collar and cuffs – prison garb.’ The tall woman turned and looked at the man with the opal studded brow. ‘Sir, you own this ship, what do you wish done?’

The man stepped forwards. He looked exhausted, thought Mersadie, as though the universe had already piled more onto his shoulders than he ever thought he would be able to bear.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, looking just at Mersadie.

‘My name is Mersadie Oliton,’ she said.

‘Why were you a prisoner, Mersadie Oliton?’

She looked at him, thinking of what the truth would do in this moment, and then gave the only answer that came to mind.

‘I can’t say.’