Once the gravity field and atmosphere were in place-the latter drawn from the substance of the asteroid itself-Bourdain had clearly spared little expense furnishing his new world with a complete flora and fauna, all prevented by Shoal magic from spontaneously floating away into interplanetary space.

Like Sant’Arcangelo, Bourdain’s Rock looked like a god’s discarded toy. Some of the buildings on the asteroid were tall enough to push through the atmosphere-containment fields like fingers poked through a soap bubble.

The Piri Reis had been decelerating for half an hour now, its engines pointing towards the asteroid in a braking manoeuvre. Strapped into an acceleration couch, Dakota looked up at a viewscreen showing densely wooded forests that fell away into deep crevasses. A herd of deer moved past grey cliffs, while the distant face of Jupiter was reflected in the crystal waters of a lake.

Light came from incandescent fusion units mounted on poles that also extended out above the thin cladding of air. She watched the Rock turn before the ever-watching eye of Jupiter, banks of lights strung along the asteroid’s longitude winked out to create a simulated night across one misshapen hemisphere.

It was utterly beautiful.

It took Dakota a while to find her way from the docking bays, across the asteroid surface and into the Great Hall. Enormous deerhounds ran past as she entered its vast space, their claws skittering and slipping on the polished mirror-like sheen of the marble flooring. The Rock’s gravity had been set to about two-thirds Earth-normal. Beyond, in the distance, the sound of revelry echoed from the curved stone buttresses of a cathedral-like ceiling that looked at least a thousand years old, but had actually been in place less than five.

In the distance she saw two Shoal-members, each floating in their separate water-filled containment fields, each bubble supported by tiny anti-grav units. A retinue of Consortium bodyguards accompanied each of the creatures at a distance. Long tables held food and drink, all served by human waiting staff.

Dakota had dressed quickly, in loose light multi-pocketed trousers, and the one clean t-shirt she’d been able to find in a frenzied search through the zero-gravity maelstrom of her ship in the moments prior to docking.

She’d waited for several minutes in the antechamber that led into the main hall itself, composing herself and trying to quell the hammering in her chest. She had nothing to worry about, not really. Bourdain would be busy throwing endless parties in order to attract new investors, but she hadn’t expected to find herself attending any of these lavish dos.

All she wanted to do was sort out her payment, then leave immediately, and start a new life somewhere very far away.

Nothing could be simpler.

‘Piri, can you hear me?’ Dakota asked the air, unnecessarily.

‹Loud and clear,› the Piri Reis responded. ‹System response at maximum. Further directions?›

The computer’s voice was sharp and masculine, and Dakota had a mental flash of Piri’s effigy. Piri wasn’t really intelligent, of course, any more than her Ghost implants: that latter technology had been created in response to humanity’s failure to yet develop anything close to true artificial intelligence. But, even so, there were times when it felt close enough.

None, Dakota sub-vocalized, stepping forward into the noise and light of the party. Just keep an eye on things.

Sheets of transparent crystal allowed her to look up between the vast stone buttresses of the hall towards the black sky above. For the next few hours, it would be night on Bourdain’s Rock. Beyond the windows she could see where a sheet of rock rose sharply to a knife-edge peak, its vertiginous incline dripping with mosses and blue flowers. Everything she saw had been designed for maximum impact.

There must have been several hundred people at this particular gathering, but even they managed to look a little lost in such a vast interior space. She was very conscious of the clack of her boot heels as she crossed the marble floor.

The noise of the party grew louder, with a full-blown live orchestra, positioned on a raised dais, playing light classical music. Parakeets and finches flew overhead, darting towards nests built in carefully sculpted twists of ivy that grew up the walls. Unlike the Sant’Arcangelo asteroid, which had been designed as a financial centre for the outer-systems mining industry, Bourdain’s Rock was developed solely as a theme park for the obscenely rich.

Apart from the two Shoal-members, almost all the guests present were human. A couple of dark-furred Bandati had settled down on various perches just above the milling heads of the guests below, their vast roseate wings twitching above their tiny bodies while they conversed, via translator devices, with a group of men and women who had the hard-faced look of deep-space miners.

Dakota felt a small thrill of nerves when she saw the Bandati, but the chances they might have any idea who she was, or that she had stolen something from them, were vanishingly tiny…

‘Miss Merrick?’

She turned to see a gaunt-faced man in a formal suit, his hands clasped in front of him. She’d met Hugh Moss before on previous trips to the Rock, yet every time she managed to forget how badly he creeped her out. He had, as ever, the demeanour of a bloodless corpse that had been resurrected on a mortuary slab less than five minutes before and already regarded the experience with a warm nostalgic glow.

‘Miss Merrick,’ he repeated, in a voice drier than a desert grave. ‘If you’d care to follow me, Mr Bourdain is waiting for you.’ He gestured towards a door set into one wall, and began to turn away.

‘Wait a minute.’ She put up both hands as if physically trying to stop him. He halted and regarded her with a baleful eye. ‘I don’t have any intention of going anywhere unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’ve done my job. Just pay me now so I can get out of here.’

Moss smiled, revealing a row of yellowing tombstone teeth. ‘It seems Mr Bourdain wants to talk with you first.’

Dakota chuckled nervously. ‘C’mon, what for? He must have a hundred cargo shipments coming in here every day. What’s to discuss?’

‘That’s a matter for yourself and Mr Bourdain.’

Dakota studied him for a moment. ‘Is there some problem?’

Moss shook his head. ‘No problem.’

‘But there’s no point in my meeting him now I’ve done my job, right? I could just get paid and go. How does that sound?’

Moss regarded her silently for several moments, then shook his head slowly. ‘Speaking to Mr Bourdain is now a condition of payment’-that tombstone smile again -’and then you can be on your way.’