'Of course we go on,' interrupted Dakota. 'We chase Trader all the way there. Why give up now?'
'You don't make the decisions here!' Martinez exploded, stabbing a finger at her. 'You told us yourself, he's gone to do the one thing we came here to do. That means our job is over. So we go home.'
'Look, I don't know if we can go home,' said Dakota wearily.
They all stared at her, waiting until she continued.
'When I was chasing him – chasing Whitecloud, I mean – Trader told me the Emissaries had some way of tracking us.'
'How do you know that's true?' Corso demanded.
'I didn't believe him at first, but the fact is those scouts we ran into back there knew just where to find us, out of a truly enormous volume of space. The chances of that being a coincidence are beyond astronomical. Trader said so himself
'That would make sense out of what happened back at the cache,' confirmed Perez, from beside her. 'It felt like an ambush.'
'Exactly.' Dakota nodded vigorously. 'They clearly knew we were coming.'
'If that's the case,' Lamoureaux said slowly, 'they could be on their way here right now.'
'Just hold on for one minute,' said Martinez, moving closer to Dakota. 'You haven't told us how they could track us.'
She chose her words carefully as she answered. Some things, she had decided, were better left unsaid for the moment.
'He told me there was something planted on the frigate that would lead them right to us.'
'So what does that have to do with Trader taking the artefact?' asked Perez.
'He planned on grabbing it for himself once we'd done what we came out here to do,' she explained. 'But he panicked when he realized the Emissaries knew how to find us. The way he sees it, we might as well have a bull's-eye painted on the hull.'
Martinez glared at her. 'Even if any of this is true, it doesn't fundamentally alter my original point. There's no reason for us not to turn back.'
'Because, even if we did turn back, there's a good chance the Emissaries would still come after us,' she snapped. 'And remember what Whitecloud said: the Mos Hadroch might decide not to let Trader activate it. If that's true, then it's imperative we carry on and be ready to finish the job, if we have to.'
Martinez laughed. 'You really believed that fairy tale?'
'The Mos Hadroch isn't just a weapon any more than the Magi ships are just ships,' Dakota persisted. 'And Whitecloud might have been an evil son of a bitch, but even you could see he was telling the truth when he recorded that message. Right there at the end, he did one good thing in his life by trying to warn us.'
'How the hell do you expect us to "finish the job"?' Martinez demanded. 'The artefact is gone!'
'We have the command structure,' she reminded him. 'We could activate the artefact ourselves, if Trader fails. And even if he doesn't, we have enough drones left to let us try and stop him escaping with the artefact.'
'Perhaps you're forgetting who's in charge of this expedition,' Martinez spat, his face turning red.
Dakota regarded him with a weary expression. 'You're out of your depth, Commander. You don't have any idea about the forces we're dealing with, or the kind of power they have.'
Martinez started to move towards her with bunched fists, but Corso leaped up and grabbed him by the shoulders.
'I want you to shut the fuck up for now,' Corso barked at Dakota, then turned his attention to the Commander.
'Eduard… listen to me. I know exactly what's going through your head right now. It's much the same thing that's running through mine. I don't want anything more right now than to go home. But I also don't want to have come this far just to turn around. Especially not if something could still go wrong.'
'I agree,' said Lamoureaux, nodding vigorously and gazing around at them all. 'We can't just turn around now – not this late in the day.'
'I'm sorry, sir,' added Perez, 'but, with the greatest respect, I'm with the others on this one.'
'We still have most of the drones,' Dakota pointed out, sweeping back the dark fringe of hair from her face. 'And the new field-generators, too. We can do this.'
Martinez stared at her like she was insane. 'Are you even listening to yourself? You already said the Emissaries know that we're on our way!'
'No, they only know where we are right now. And I don't see any reason to believe they have any idea exactly where we're headed, or that the Mos Hadroch even exists, let alone what it's capable of
A sudden alert sounded, an insistent beeping that cut off abruptly when Corso reached out and touched the console nearest him.
'Scouts,' he announced a moment later. 'Lots of them, and about one light-minute away. No details on their acceleration or specific vector, but definitely too close for comfort.'
Martinez tightened his hands again into fists before opening them wide, peering down at them as if seeing them for the first time.
'I guess that clinches it, then,' he said, dropping his arms helplessly to his sides. 'We go on.' The frigate jumped again less than twenty minutes later, running at approximately 40 per cent jump capacity – just enough to carry them several hundred light-years across the Perseus Arm and into the close vicinity of their target system.
Dakota took the interface chair for the jump procedure, fatigue washing over her like a dark tide.
She closed her eyes and let herself sink deep into the ship's data-space. As long as she could keep up concentration, she could stay awake.
The power of suns flowed out of the fusion reactors and then through the drive-spines, tearing a hole in the fabric of the universe. The stars twisted, then changed.
A flood of new data immediately began to stream in via the sensor arrays: spectral analyses, mass estimates, number of visible planets, evidence of technology. They were still at least half a light-day out from the main-sequence star at the system's centre, but they would get up close to the target world through the next couple of jumps.
Dakota was distantly aware of Lamoureaux guiding a small contingent of spider-mechs out on to the hull, intending to make a quick assessment of the hull-degradation.
Dakota activated the command structure that Moss had given her, and tried using it to locate Trader's ship. Before very long she got an automated response from the vicinity of a low-albedo object somewhere deep in the heart of the star system. She compared the object with the data she had received from Trader, and they matched. That meant they had reached the target cache.
She checked in on Lamoureaux once more, and found he was analysing video feeds scraped from the spider-mechs that had been sent into the hold. Pieces and fragments of hull-plate clung to those sections of the underlying skeleton that had survived the blast.
I can see the landers, she sent to Lamoureaux.
‹Yeah, they must have been at the farthest point in the hold from where Trader's yacht was when it jumped.›
Feeling a hand on her shoulder, she opened her eyes to see Corso bending over her.
'Do we know where we go from here?' he asked.
She nodded, her throat dry. 'The target cache is on a small planet in the inner system, not much over a thousand klicks across and tidally locked to its star. The cache is on the dark side, however.'
'And how long before we get there?'
She let her head fall back against the head-rest, almost afraid to close her eyes in case she passed out from exhaustion.
'At least another hour before the drive is up to making another jump.' She raised a hand, stopping him before he could speak again. 'I know what you're going to say. The scouts will reach us before that, but it's just not possible to do it any sooner.'