“A regular little squad of drones,” Ashly said. “I wonder if he doesn’t trust them?”

“It’s a bit late for us to start worrying about his status now,” Joshua said. “Oski, see if you can work out how to freeze up those bodyguards if the need arises.”

“I’ll try.”

Joshua fixed their position twenty-five kilometres away from the sunside surface. Waiting was difficult for him. He really wanted to be down there with Quantook-LOU, seeing what was happening. That would put him in control and ready to respond immediately to whatever the situation threw at them. Just like he’d done at Ayacucho and Nyvan. The front line was the only place he could be sure things would be done right.

Yet if Ayacucho and Nyvan had taught him anything, it was that there was more to command than good piloting. He trusted his crew to handle the starship’s systems well enough. Deploying the experts he had with him was an extension of that principal. That second time in Anthi-CL, when Quantook-LOU had become insistent, he’d known right away he shouldn’t have been there in person. So now it was guilt rather than professionalism behind the decision to send the serjeants into the knot.

At least no one had protested that they should have been sent as well. He rather suspected that the diskcity was getting to the others in the same way as it did to him.

They’d been holding station for fifteen minutes when Beaulieu’s sensor monitoring programs alerted her that the sunscoop ship had altered its orbit. The massive fusion engines were firing, propelling it at a steady fiftieth of a gee. “It is now on an interception trajectory with us,” Beaulieu told the bridge crew.

“Jesus, how long have we got?”

“Approximately seventy minutes.”

Ione listened to Joshua’s news about the sunscoop ship and told him: “All right, I’ll ask Quantook-LOU.”

They were in another of the dead tubes, the fifth so far, still churning up the dust as they swept through. Apart from the lack of air and fluid, they’d all seemed in reasonable condition. She could see no physical reason for their abandonment. Although at some point they’d certainly been stripped of all their ancillary equipment. Even a couple of the tube-end bulkheads had been salvaged, leaving gaping openings into the junctions.

She switched her communication block to the frequency the Mosdva were using. “Quantook-LOU, the captain has been in touch with me. He wants you to know that the sun-scoop ship has changed direction and is now heading for the Lady Macbeth . Do you know anything of this?”

“I do not. The sunscoop belongs to the dominion of Danversi-YV. They are not allied to us on any level.”

“Is it likely to pose a threat to our ship?”

“It does not carry any weapons. Their strategy will be to intimidate the Lady Macbeth into dealing with them, and to place their own group in this location in an attempt to block my progress. Do you have weapons capable of destroying it?”

“We are not sure of the effect our weapons would have. Captain Calvert does not wish to fire upon an unarmed ship.”

“His views will change when the sunscoop’s fusion drive is pointing at the Lady Macbeth . Tell him that the dominion of Danversi-YV has suffered the loss of two sunscoops in the last fifteen years. They have been much weakened by this: their alliance has shrunk, diminishing their influence. They will be the first rim dominion to fail once I have the faster-than-light drive. That makes them the most desperate to obtain it for themselves.”

“Understood.”

The Mosdva glided out into a large junction chamber that had seven tubes radiating away from it.

“This could be interesting,” Ione told the others. “Judging by the position of two of these airlock hatches, the tubes behind them lead up into the knot. If they are tubes.”

“We have your location,” Liol replied. “You’re only a hundred and fifty metres from an inhabited surface tube.”

The Mosdva launched themselves from the bulkhead rim one after the other, heading unwaveringly for the first airlock hatch that led into the knot. They cut an oval of carbon-based composite out of the centre and went through.

“Looks like we’re avoiding the locals,” Ione said.

It was completely dark inside the tube. When the first serjeant squirmed through the hole its helmet sensors picked out six broad beams of ultraviolet light coming from the Mosdva up ahead. They were moving fast along the wall of the tube.

“I recognise this surface,” Ione said with as much excitement as her bitek neurones allowed her to generate.

The walls of the tube were made up from the same baked-sponge material that the Tyrathca had used in Tanjuntic-RI’s zero-gee sections. The serjeant’s armoured gauntlets could fit into the regular indentations, allowing them both to swarm up the tube after the Mosdva.

“No such thing as coincidence,” Joshua said.

“The airlock ahead is a different design,” Ione said. “Not like those on Tanjuntic-RI, but not like the ones we’ve just come through, either.”

The hatch at the centre of the bulkhead was a thick titanium square, with fat rim seals and piston-like hinges. It was three metres in diameter. Her infrared sensors showed it was a lot warmer than the tube walls.

The Mosdva had stopped at the bulkhead to apply small sensor patches to the metal. “The next section is in use,” Quantook-LOU said. “I wish to avoid contact for now. We will go outside.”

A patch of the ossified sponge was scraped off the wall with a power tool, revealing the glossy inner casing. They cut through it with a laser and slid out.

Ione switched her helmet sensors to infrared. They were deep inside the convoluted knot. She could see no order or pattern; tubes criss-crossed through space leaving small irregular gaps which were caged by thick struts, forming a bird’s-nest filigree around her. Brilliant red threads revealed heat conduits running outside the tubes, while magnetic sensor imagery overlaid the translucent emerald lines of power cables.

“Plenty of activity here,” Ione said. “But every tube is solid and opaque. Can’t see in yet.”

“What about where you’re going?” Joshua asked. “Any ideas?”

“Not a chance. This is just too big a tangle to see more than a hundred metres in any direction.”

Thick strips of the sponge material had been laid lengthways along each tube, allowing them to move about easily. The Mosdva started off with little fuss. Ione’s guidance blocks told her they were moving still deeper into the knot.

After two hundred metres the clutter of tubes came to an abrupt end. The centre of the knot was a cavity over two kilometres broad. A cylinder eight hundred metres in diameter filled the centre, its hubs fixed to the surrounding tubes with heavy magnetic bearings, allowing it to rotate slowly. A band of regular triangular ridges covered twenty per cent of the outer surface up at one end. Ione’s infrared sensors showed the band glowing a soft uniform pink, much warmer than the rest of the shell. A radiator disposing of the cylinder’s internal heat. Which meant the systems inside were functional.

“Well, well,” she said. “Look at this. Somebody still enjoys a gravity field to live in.” She scanned her sensors round. The cavity around the cylinder resembled a spaceport maintenance bay, gantry arms and support girders stuck out of the surrounding bulwark of tubing, threaded with conduits and hoses. They ended in sturdy clamp rings that sprouted long drill bits, inert and folded inwards like defunct sea anemones. Most were empty, though some of the clamps were gripping lumps of jet black rock. They’d been cut like diamonds, with hundreds of small sheer facets. There was no standard shape or size. One piece was so large it needed ten gantry arms to hold it in place, its contoured surface following the curve of the central cylinder. Most required only two or three clamps, while there were scraps that had been skewered by just a single drill bit. Units of machinery were clinging to the rock, so dark and cold they could have been complicated freak outcrops. Except for one, in the middle of the largest chunk, which glowed salmon pink with internal heat.