Marlie shrugged happily. She had a way of smiling completely regardless of what she was actually saying, which indicated a lifelong-and to Dakota deeply irritating-dedication to perkiness beyond reason. ‘I picked up a City Bulletin just before I got here. Looks like he left voluntarily, after all, and the Elders are going crazy because of it.’

Dakota nodded. The news of Banville’s disappearance had already inspired riots in the Grover Communities, as the Elders preferred to call them. Shanties would have been a better word-they’d been growing out beyond the city walls for three years now, packed as they were with refugees flooding in from the failed Grover colony a thousand miles further north.

Dakota quickly performed the visualization routines that opened her subconscious to a flood of data and news from the local tach-net. Her eyes widened in shock as a torrent of new information was dumped into her skull: Banville had disappeared less than a day before, but within the past few minutes a recorded message had surfaced in which he claimed to have joined the Oratory of Uchida willingly, and had left Bellhaven for ever.

She looked over at Marlie, knowing instantly that she was getting the exact same information.

‘This is bad,’ Dakota said unnecessarily.

Marlie nodded. ‘Yes, Dakota, it’s very bad.’

There were reports of a dozen more riots erupting across the globe as the shock revelation of Banville’s defection spread. Dakota watched a pall of smoke rising from two different sectors of the Grover camps as she stood on the flat roof of the Garrison’s East Quadrant Tower, the perimeter of which was ringed with ancient battlements. Steel and ceramic mountings for pulse weapons, which had defended Erkinning during the First Civil War, lay pitted and rusted from a century and a half of neglect.

Given the current circumstances, the celebrations surrounding Dakota’s graduation were a touch muted. Still, as the night wore on, Langley had set up his telescope as he’d promised, upon this selfsame rooftop, so they could all take a look at the new supernova sliding towards the horizon as dawn approached.

The telescope looked positively medieval to Dakota, a fat tube of gleaming copper and brass mounted on a rotating equatorial base, as if some machine-arachnid invader from beyond the known worlds were stalking the city rooftops.

‘Did you say something, Dakota?’ Langley peered over towards her.

She gestured upwards with her chin, indicating the supernova. ‘I said, I’d like to go someplace like that some day, and see what a dying star looks like up close.’

Her gaze met Aiden’s and she faltered, her pale skin flushing red as she recalled their fumbled intimacies in the dormitories.

‘You’re kidding, right?’ said Aiden, a touch the worse for wear from drinking. ‘Go visit the supernova?’ he laughed, eliciting nervous chuckles from any remaining students who were still awake and hadn’t already passed out. Marlie sat cross-legged, ignoring the damp tiles under her as she fixed her attention on Langley, who in turn was fully aware of her unrequited longing. Martens’ owlish features were distracted by some personal reverie, lost to the world around him. Otterich and Spezo looked bored and tired, while the rest had since made their apologies and retired for the night. Exploding stars didn’t hold much interest for some students.

Langley himself flashed Aiden a warning look. Then he glanced at Dakota, apparently satisfied at last with the minute adjustments he had been making to the telescope. ‘I share the sentiment, but the Large Magellanic Cloud is a little further away than the Shoal are prepared to transport either you or anyone else.’

‘Yeah, what is it again?’ sneered Aiden. ‘Hundred and sixty thousand light years, right?’ He flashed Dakota a grin, and she shot him back a look of pure hatred. ‘So we’re seeing an event from about the time the Shoal first developed faster-than-light technology. Loooong way away, right?’

The first supernova had appeared six years before, early in the autumn, and just a couple of days after Dakota’s sixteenth birthday. It had blossomed like cold fire, briefly one of the brightest elements in the night sky, before gradually fading out over the following weeks. Then, over the next several years, dozens more had appeared at irregular intervals, shining brightly for a few brief weeks before again fading back into stellar anonymity. And all this had occurred within a relatively tiny sector of a neighbouring galaxy.

‘What you’re all forgetting,’ Langley told them in his soft-spoken way, ‘is that these novae still represent a mystery. And there’s nothing people like more than a mystery. It’s in our nature.’

He stepped back from the telescope and rested one hand gently on its glinting carapace. ‘Martens, since you’ve been studying the novae, why don’t you remind us of some of the background detail? What is it that’s so remarkable and unusual about them?’

Martens wasn’t entirely sober himself, and he blinked and stuttered, caught unawares by the Tutor’s potentially dangerous line of enquiry. ‘Uh, Sir, up until now our understanding was that most stars that go nova are part of a double-star system.’ His foot kicked over an unfinished bottle of beer that sat forgotten by his foot. He reached for it, but changed his mind halfway. Dakota caught the look on Aiden’s face, and even he suddenly looked a lot more sober. ‘One of these stars sucks up material from its companion, and as a result you get a stellar detonation. But, as far as anyone can tell, none of these new novae was either massive enough to go nova, or even part of a double-star system.’

‘And there’s also the double neutrino bursts,’ Dakota added impulsively, whereupon Martens looked grateful not to have to say any more. Langley turned to her with a look of appreciation, even admiration, which made her blush.

‘Deep space scanners have always recorded a neutrino surge occurring a few minutes before any visual observation is made,’ she continued. ‘But every one of the recent Magellan novae has been preceded by a neutrino echo: not one but two neutrino bursts, separated by a few seconds, followed by the normal visual confirmation. Yet that should be impossible. Maybe a couple of novae appear every century in our own galaxy, but now there’s a couple of dozen occurring in a neighbouring galaxy made up of only a tenth as many stars as our own Milky Way. That’s in the space of a few years, and almost literally next door to each other. It just doesn’t make sense.’

Langley smiled. ‘See, that’s a girl with genuine curiosity, Aiden. She likes to ask questions, while you just sit around and complain.’

There was nervous laughter from Martens, which Otterich joined in with after a moment. Aiden forced a smile as if to say You win, and Dakota suddenly found it hard to remember what it was she’d liked about him enough to let him climb on top of her not so long ago. She put it down to a combination of alcohol and the undeniable fact that he was far from unattractive.

She sighed and pulled her thoughts away from the memory of their bodies tangled together between warm sheets. It was one thing for them to climb up here on a frozen rooftop because yet another new star had appeared in the sky, but even coming close to asking the reason why could, in some quarters, lead to problems.

When those first novae had appeared, the City Elders, who ruled Erkinning and all the other cities of the Free States, had been quick to label such stellar manifestations as part of God’s Ineffable Purpose, and, therefore, not open to scientific or indeed any other kind of speculation.

The Consortium-the name by which the administrative and military body that controlled human-occupied space was known-had little interest in local politics, yet the fact remained that of Bellhaven’s several different nations, the Free States had been heavily invested in by the Consortium itself due to the remarkable advances that technicians in Erkinning and certain other Free State cities had achieved in developing Ghost technology. Under the circumstances, this clampdown on public speculation over the novae was little more than sabre-rattling: an attempt by the Elders to show they remained the real authority in Erkinning, when everyone knew otherwise.