Corso groaned silently, and started to towel himself dry. Another crisis to deal with. 'Anything else?'

'An urgent request from Ted Lamoureaux, who wants a meeting with you straight away. Something for your ears only, he said.'

'First things first.' Anger flowed like heat through his thoughts; there had to be some way to make people understand he wouldn't tolerate these constant acts of terrorism. 'We need to be seen to be reacting to this strongly and positively. Do we have any idea at all who's responsible for the sabotage?'

'Nothing clear as yet, but we've got analysts taking the transport's brain apart right now.'

Sometimes he wondered just whose bright idea it had been to give him this much responsibility, and then he reminded himself, for the millionth time, that he had volunteered for the job. Previous investigations of attempts to either kill him or hurt the colony in Ocean's Deep had a nasty habit of running into dead ends. Would-be executioners and saboteurs either proved to be mercenaries with no knowledge of who'd hired them, or simply turned up dead by the time the Consortium's own intelligence services tracked them down.

'Who's our most likely suspect?' he asked. 'I'm talking governments here, Nisha. Who would you say wants rid of me the most of all this week?'

'I would guess… the Midgarth security services are near the top. There are rumours they've been soliciting secret talks with both Morgan's World and Bohr. In addition, they've been openly vetoing our request to take part in the next round of crisis talks. Also, some of their more recent candidates for navigator training turned out to have connections deep within their respective intelligence communities. We rejected them, naturally.'

'We've been sitting around while other people take potshots at us for far too long. Where's Willis right now?' Corso asked, referring to his security head back at Ocean's Deep.

'Probably asleep, Senator. I reckon Leo Olivarri would be on active watch-duty about now.' Olivarri was Willis's deputy.

Corso grunted and checked the bandage in a mirror, to make sure it wasn't going to slip. His arms and chest were marked with a fine criss-crossing of scars, like memories of pain and death carved into his flesh.

He started to get dressed, pulling on an anti-ballistic vest made from compacted layers of genetically enhanced spider-silk, then a formal dress shirt on top. A carefully concealed holstered pistol was next, followed by a slim blade tucked down the back of one boot. He kept himself armed at all times these days, and had recently spent a lot of time in the company of men like Breisch, learning how to properly use the various weapons he carried.

In the two years since Dakota had left, his chest had broadened and any excess fat had drained from his face, lending him a much more angular appearance. His fingers had grown calloused from months of weapons and hand-to-hand combat training. There was a long, dark burn mark on the inside of his left arm, invisible beneath his shirt – testament to a challenge he had taken part in less than a year before.

'All right, Nisha, this is what we're going to do,' he said, pulling on his jacket. 'Tell Leo to wake Willis up. I want them to locate and round up every Midgarth representative to the Fleet he can find at Ocean's Deep, and have them hauled in. They can call it protective custody, but make sure that, one way or another, at least some of them are formally arrested and charged on suspicion of espionage.'

'I'm not aware that we have sufficient leads to warrant any such arrests, Senator.'

'It doesn't matter. Do it anyway. If they don't like it, they can catch the next ship going home.' He thought for a moment. 'And if we can't find any leads, keep them locked up, anyway. Let's see if we can stir up some shit for a change.'

'They won't be happy, sir.'

Understatement of the century, thought Corso, but said, 'Fuck them. I also want all of their representatives' assets, financial and otherwise, frozen pending an immediate investigation. Have the office put together a general press release after the fact, nothing too specific. But I want it worded in such a way that it's clear we intend to take a stand. Even if Midgarth isn't involved, maybe some of the others will think twice if they think their heads might wind up on the block as well.'

'Yes, Senator.'

The chime sounded again, indicating that the link had been broken.

Corso took a deep breath, and pulled a small vial out of his jacket pocket. He shook a couple of pills out of it and swallowed them dry. How many hours a night of sleep was he getting these days? Four, maybe five?

The medication helped, but he knew he was overdoing it.

Corso exited the gym and met the half-dozen heavily armed men and women that comprised his personal security detail in the building's lobby. From there it was a short walk across an open plaza to the domed building that housed Eugenia's government offices. His guards surrounded him, their weapons discreetly tucked into pockets or within easy reach inside jackets. Tiny security devices whirred in the air around them like mechanical insects, scanning for anything that might be missed by ordinary human eyes.

Eugenia had started life as an asteroid and, like so many of the larger bodies scattered throughout the Sol system following first contact with the Shoal, had been transformed by using the Shoal's own technology. A gravity engine had been buried at the asteroid's core, while shaped fields completely surrounding it retained a pressurized atmosphere and protected it from radiation. Fusion torches – suspended from poles that pushed through the shaped fields like pins through soap bubbles – shone heat and light down on the tiny world.

It was the first boosted world Corso had ever found himself on, and he couldn't say for sure if he was enjoying the experience. His stomach lurched every time he caught sight of the impossibly close horizon.

For all that, Eugenia was one of the largest of the Main Belt boosted worlds, and a little over two hundred kilometres in diameter. It had started out larger, but its original rough, potato-like shape had been less than ideal, so it had been blasted and sculpted into something more approximating a sphere. It had even been allowed to retain Petit-Prince, one of its two small moons. An iron sculpture of Saint-Exupery's Little Prince stood near the centre of the plaza, gazing up at a point where his namesake would pass overhead every five days.

But before very long, the asteroid and its moons were going to become eternally separated. The Little Prince was going to have to make his own way through space.

Yugo Stankovic, one of Corso's aides, was waiting for him in the foyer of the government building.

'All right, Yugo, Nisha already gave me an outline of what's happened. Is there anything else I should know?' Corso asked, as Stankovic matched pace with him. The security detail made their way elsewhere while Corso and his aide headed for a bank of elevators.

'What she told you, she got from me. We managed to disable the cargo platform remotely without any further incident, but it was pretty close.'

'How bad could it have been?'

'It could have wiped us out. The Consortium's own intelligence services are working hard at stopping any word of this getting out to the media, and Eugenia's prime minister took the chair of an emergency session about five minutes ago.' Stankovic smiled and shrugged. 'We're not invited, of course.'

An elevator arrived and they stepped inside. 'Who's in charge of figuring out who's responsible?'

'Lieutenant Nazarro of our own Authority security is working on it with the local security heads in a separate meeting,' Stankovic replied. 'I should have an initial report from him within the hour.'

Corso flexed his hands, and found himself wishing for a more tangible enemy. All the careful manoeuvring of the last few years was coming to nothing. Whoever was responsible for these acts of sabotage was doing a good job of remaining eternally elusive, leaving him with the near-certainty that the only ones capable of covering their tracks so thoroughly were precisely those governments that coveted the Peacekeeper Authority's power the most. As far as most of them were concerned, he was the one thing standing between them and the stars.