‘I’m glad you’re here. I have something I want your opinion on,’ he said and motioned Tyson forward. ‘Here. Come look at this.’

Tyson sniffed as he stared at the parchment read-out. He didn’t expect much. ‘What am I looking at?’

Kallio pointed, gathering up the folds of parchment. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘If we screen out the other chatter, then look.’

Tyson picked the paper up between thumb and forefinger. At last he saw what the signals officer was talking about. Irregular signals spiking the feed.

Tyson frowned for a moment and then Kallio tapped out the sequence so Tyson could hear it. The colour sergeant started smiling. ‘That’s clever.’

Kallio grinned. Cadia had been a militarised state, with all the military frequencies on constant use. In order not to interfere with these, Whiteshields had had their own set of special dummy codes for children so that they did not interrupt the military channels. They communicated simply – things like Danger, Stay alert, We’re here.

‘Whiteshield training code,’ Kallio said.

‘I’m not so old that I’ve forgotten,’ Tyson snapped.

‘It’s not a vox-set. Look. It’s coming from the direction of Tor Kharybdis. It’s across all these channels. It’s crude, but if I had to hazard a guess, someone is sparking powercells.’

Tyson nodded. ‘It’s not something to do with the eruption?’

Kallio shook his head. He turned to his assistant, Trooper Stal. ‘What does it say?’

The young man coughed to clear his throat. ‘Sir. It’s a series of numbers – one-zero-one-seven-two.’

‘Cadian Hundred-and-First.’ Tyson frowned. ‘But what about the others?’

‘Seventh Company. Second Platoon.’

‘Dido’s lot?’

Kallio slapped the tabletop. ‘Yes!’

Tyson was impassive. ‘It could be a trap.’

Kallio looked at him. ‘It could be. There’s only one way to find out.’

Tyson was secretly elated, but he was wary of joy like he was wary of hope – both were illusions that left the plunge of disappointment deeper than before.

But once Kallio had pinpointed the origin of the signal as coming from the area of Faith Beach, he went to Sparker with the news.

Tyson presented the information to him in a straight­forward manner. ‘There’s a chance that the enemy know the same codes. Identical equipment. The same bandwidths. If they look through their data-library deeply enough, they will also have the Whiteshield codes, somewhere.’

At the end he said, ‘What should we do, sir?’

‘That is the best news all day!’ Sparker said and almost broke out the grog. ‘Get a crew out there! If there’s one Cadian left we bring them in. Go get them. Now!’