Lamoureaux's nostrils flared angrily. 'I already told you. She threatened to shut the drones down, and leave us defenceless. What did you expect me to do?'
Corso shook his head vehemently. 'I refuse to believe she'd make a threat like that, let alone follow through on it.'
'She did make a threat like that,' Lamoureaux yelled. 'Maybe, Lucas, you don't know her nearly as goddamn well as you think you do.'
Corso punched him in the nose.
Lamoureaux staggered back, then stumbled, collapsing to the deck. Corso loomed over him, his expression furious.
Strong hands pulled Corso away. A moment later he was pushed into a chair and found himself face to face with Martinez, the Commander's hand planted firmly against his chest.
'I was on the bridge when all of this happened,' said Martinez. 'Now, I didn't hear what Dakota and Ted were saying to each other, but the responsibility is still with me. So if you want to take a swing at anyone, try me.'
Lamoureaux wiped blood away from his nose and glared at Corso. 'Want to know what else she told me, Lucas? She's the reason the Emissaries knew where to find us.'
Corso stared at him. 'What?'
Lamoureaux laughed, and then coughed. 'That's exactly what she told me. The Emissaries are tracking her, not the frigate. That's all I can tell you.'
'He's telling the truth.' Martinez nodded towards the overhead display, which still tracked the ongoing engagement. 'The scouts are breaking away and going after the lander.'
Corso stared up at it, too, with a stricken expression. 'She'll never make it.'
Lamoureaux staggered upright and pulled himself back into the interface chair.
Martinez let go of Corso and stepped over to Lamoureaux, handing him a handkerchief. Ted took it from him with mumbled thanks.
'Dan, keep an eye on Mr Corso here. If he tries taking a swing at anyone else, find somewhere to lock him up. Meanwhile, Mr Lamoureaux, I want you to do some calculations. Work out how long you think we have left before the star blows, and how much power we'll need to jump out of the vicinity in time, before it does.'
'She's abandoned us,' Corso muttered, half to himself.
'Don't be so sure,' said Martinez. 'I'd say she's given us some breathing room. Ted, put her current trajectory and location on the overhead.'
An image of the cache-world and its star appeared overhead, complete with outsized representations of both the Mjollnir and the lander, the latter already fast approaching the planet's surface.
Lamoureaux's reply was muffled by the handkerchief pressed to his face. 'If she can stay alive long enough, she should reach the cache itself in about fifteen minutes.' The lander received a direct hit that sent it spinning so hard that Dakota was almost ripped out of her seat restraints. A sudden roar blanketed out the whine and screech of the bulkheads as the atmosphere vented, while her filmsuit enveloped her instantly.
Prior to this, dozens of direct hits and near-misses had finally overwhelmed one of the two field-generators attached to the lander. Apart from her filmsuit, the only thing between her and certain death was a couple of Meridian drones she had peeled away from the main pack. She had been worried Lamoureaux might not allow her control over them, but in the end he hadn't tried to stop her.
On the screen, she could see the cache growing bigger as she dropped towards it. According to the signal she was still picking up from Trader's yacht, he was more than thirty kilometres directly down the throat of the shaft.
Something about the thought of descending into that bottomless hole made her skin prickle with terror.
Down, down, down she went, the cache expanding towards Dakota like a wide and hungry mouth.
More pulse-beam fire blasted out from defensive structures scattered around the mouth of the cache. The lander spun under another direct hit, and alert messages flared across her screens.
She caught one brief glimpse of vast fields of slag and rubble around the mouth of the shaft, before the lander began to drop down into limitless darkness. Faraway lights, mounted on the sides of the shaft, illuminated what looked like abandoned cities or factories clinging to the walls.
She left the two drones on guard near the surface. They wouldn't be able to hold off a full-frontal assault for long, but at least she would have some warning if the Emissaries were about to follow her in.
The lander dropped down farther, while the mouth of the cache seemed to grow smaller and smaller, increasingly far overhead.
Trader, I'm not going to let you get away with the artefact. Do you hear me?
Silence.
Either something had happened to him, or he wasn't interested in talking.
Trader? Are you there? It had all been going so well until he had tried to activate the Mos Hadroch.
Trader had placed it in the mouth of the drive-forge, and then accessed the command structure he had retrieved from the Greater Magellanic Cloud so very, very long ago, activating it through a meshlike apparatus woven around two of his secondary manipulators.
The effect had been spectacular.
During his initial experiments, using Whitecloud as his proxy, it had become rapidly clear the artefact was much further beyond his understanding than he had anticipated. Aspects of its operation pointed to a powerful, almost godlike intelligence buried somewhere within its depths.
At first, the device had appeared to unravel, its outer shell peeling open to reveal internal components that defied comprehension. Its shape had mutated rapidly, expanding well beyond the drive-forge, and Trader had felt the presence of that overwhelming intelligence, for the first time, as it ransacked his yacht's onboard systems and even, to his shock, his own mind.
He had turned to flee, recognizing that events were already spinning far out of his control. But it was far too late: the artefact had already expanded to surround him, its malevolent intent suddenly and startlingly clear.
Chapter Thirty-seven
The lander kept following the signal from Trader's ship, until it dropped down on to a shelf extending out from a darkened side passage no different from the thousands of others she had seen during her long descent. The onboard systems told Dakota there was a protective field placed over the mouth of the passageway that retained a breathable atmosphere.
She exited her craft quickly, a torch in hand, and soon spotted Trader's yacht resting nearby in the gloom, on a bed of shaped fields. Most of its drive-spines were either broken or melted or both. She flicked the torch on, then bounded forward in long, loping strides due to the minimal gravity, manoeuvring her way past cluttered wreckage and abandoned machinery.
After a couple of minutes, Dakota reached a side chamber. When she shone the torch inside it, it was to see a machine she recognized as a drive-forge. As she moved closer, she observed that the Mos Hadroch had been mounted inside it.
A moment later she nearly stumbled over Trader himself.
The tiny field-generators that normally held a protective sphere of briny water around him now lay scattered across the floor of the chamber. His enormous bulk somehow looked much smaller, lying unprotected on the dusty ground. His skin looked grey and cracked, as his manipulators twisted and slithered helplessly across the grey stone underneath him.
‹Dakota.›
Jesus and Buddha. You're alive?
‹For now.›
Trader's movements were growing ever weaker as she watched. She knelt beside him and touched the fingers of one hand to his side. His flesh felt rough, abrasive.
‹It knew everything about me. Secrets buried so long I had forgotten them. But it will not function.›