His hand strayed to where the small pendant had hung around his neck for these last few years, hidden from other eyes. It stopped and dropped to his side. The pendant was not there. Somehow, in the panic to get off Cordelia, it must have broken and fallen to the floor. This was what? The tenth time in as many days that he had reached for the small golden aquila. He found himself trying to remember the words of the prayers that his wife had taught him. She had been the reason he had kept the pendant, just as she was the reason he had joined the quiet faith of the Lectitio Divinitatus. She had been the reason he had done a lot of things.

‘Transmitting on all available frequencies,’ said the signal officer. Vek nodded but did not look around. He should go and sleep… How long had it been? A day? Two? More? It had taken that long to drop over the arc of Uranus to its sunward side. Koln had danced them on a jinking path while the battle spread in silent flashes behind them. The destruction had yet to reach this hemisphere of the planet’s orbits. But chaos had run ahead of the fighting. Ships crowded towards every moon and habitat, clamouring for shelter, for help – for anything that they thought would shield them from harm.

The Antius had made for Oberon and its girdle of refinery and ore-processing plants. Fewer ships had fled here; it was further out, and its pipes and industrial platforms offered less obvious sanctuary, compared with Titania’s city-warrens and belts of defence stations. But its approaches still swarmed with craft trying to get close, trying to dock, trying to get the attention of the moon’s rulers. The Antius had to correct its course minute by minute just to keep from colliding with other craft. Vek had connections on Oberon, good connections that had proved true even when things went wrong. It seemed now that those past alliances counted for little when the heavens were ablaze.

‘Still no response, sir,’ said the signal officer. ‘I can’t even tell if they are–’

The signal officer broke off. Lights had sparked across her consoles, and parchment had begun to spool from a data transcriber.

‘What is it?’ asked Vek.

‘Officer of the watch!’ she called. The alternate sub-master that Koln had left in charge started forwards, but Vek snapped out his question again.

‘What is it?’

The officer looked around at him, blinking. There was a fog in her half-focused eyes. Terra’s pact, but she is exhausted, realised Vek.

‘We are being hailed, Master Vek,’ said the officer. Her hands were shaking as she peered down into the flickering green screens in front of her.

‘By Oberon governance?’ asked Vek.

‘No, it’s a military transmission, from a warship…’ Her voice trailed off.

Vek went still.

‘What does–’ he began.