Unfortunately, there were limitations to Dakota's ability to communicate with the two vessels. For the moment the signal had to remain, by necessity, entirely line-of-sight. Both Piri and the derelict communicated via highly directional tach-transmissions that could pass through planetary bodies with ease, but the resulting interaction with ordinary matter generated enough Cerenkov-Mahler radiation to draw the attention of Bandati monitoring systems entirely capable of identifying a rogue transmission's point of origin and its destination.

Blackflower completed a fast orbit around its parent, Dusk, roughly once every twenty-seven hours, which meant Dakota could only make contact with the Piri and the derelict for about half of that time – and only after dark, when the part of Ironbloom on which her tower stood was facing the right way.

But still, there were satellites orbiting both worlds on which signals might be piggybacked. Consequently the derelict was hijacking the Bandati's own communications grids bit by bit – but that was taking time.

And Dakota wasn't sure how much time they had left.

Corso turned and saw she was watching him. She caught his eye and immediately he looked away, a look of regret and guilt crossing his face as he did so.

In that moment, she realized he was keeping something from her. They had clung together the previous night, still desperately glad to see each other, but as the following day progressed, Corso's continued refusal even to discuss what had happened to him before he appeared in her cell both worried her and made her suspicious.

Her gut feeling that he was keeping something back increased every time she caught his furtive glances. By the time evening began to draw in the atmosphere had become badly strained, and Corso had taken up residence at the rear of the cell, silent and brooding.

She remained close by the door-opening, facing outwards, her attention on events that were literally a world away. She had her own secrets to keep, after all.

The Piri Reis had apparently been taken inside a Bandati ship, a huge dreadnought that had only recently docked with the facility.

Why this had happened was a question she couldn't answer; but it was clear the Piri was under attack.

Her ship had been placed in a maintenance cradle in what appeared to be an engineering bay, while a team of Bandati huddled next to the hole that had been blown in its side back in Nova Arctis. The Piri was designed for electronic subterfuge and sabotage rather than physical defence, and yet her ship's own surveillance systems made it clear several more Bandati lay dead nearby. They looked like they'd been blown apart.

That made her wonder if the Bandati were fighting amongst themselves for possession of the Piri – and presumably for possession of the Magi protocols still held within the Piri's stacks.

She fought down a surge of panic at the thought. She wasn't sure if the Bandati could actually use the protocols Corso had developed to take the derelict away from her – but neither was she certain they couldn't.

In her distracted state, she hadn't at first realized that more heavily-armed Bandati were now approaching from a platform at the far end of the bay, moving cautiously and setting up defensive posts as they did so – small, portable barriers behind which they could hide. But that made no sense, since the Piri had no weapons to use against them.

Yet, as she watched, soap bubbles began to appear everywhere throughout the bay, each one lasting barely a second before it shrank almost immediately to a brilliant white point, before exploding with the force of a grenade. More and more of them appeared, ripping apart both the Bandati warriors creeping towards the Piri and the ones still crouching by the rip in its hull.

But they weren't really soap bubbles. They were shaped fields – each one popping into existence around nothing but air before shrinking, compressing the atmosphere inside to a white-hot plasma that exploded outwards with devastating force when the field dissipated barely a second later.

Shrink and blow. She'd first heard of this tactic during her pilot training.

The Shoal had used it to wipe out half a Sun-Angel fleet that made the mistake of trying to smuggle nukes on board a coreship at the height of the Erskine Offensive. The Consortium didn't have access to field-generators half as sophisticated as those used by relatively senior races like the Bandati. What made things more confusing now was that the Piri didn't have any field generators at all…

But the Bandati dreadnought did, she realized. The Piri – or whatever else might be controlling it – was using the Bandati ship's own field-generators to blow its crew to smithereens.

Piri., I want you to tell me exactly what the fuck has been going on. I want to know ‹I'm afraid I am not permitted to tell you, Dakota.›

Dakota blinked, stunned. It was like Bourdain's Rock all over again. Who says?

‹I am only permitted to tell you that my actions are currently being directed by the one who is waiting for you.›

What? Do you mean the Bandati? Are they telling you what to do?

But that didn't make any sense, with almost a dozen dead Bandati scattered around the Piri – did it?

‹It is not the Bandati. Do you still want me to test the base alterations to the cargo blimp's programming? I have less than one hundred and thirty seconds before I will pass back around the far side of Blackflower.›

To hell with that, she almost said aloud. She wanted to know what was happening to her ship; she wanted to know But all the same, she was running out of time.

'Dakota?'

She turned to see Corso standing and watching her with some apprehension.

'Dakota? Who are you talking to?'

She turned away again and focused her attention instead on a train of blimps weaving their way between two neighbouring towers, following each other in tight, computer-controlled lines that reminded her of the motion of a snake undulating across desert dunes. She felt a powerful sense of satisfaction as the lead blimp in the procession suddenly changed course. Dozens of identical blimp-trains passed through the city day and night, always sticking to the same pre-programmed routes, without varying once.

Until now.

The lead blimp began to tack directly towards their own tower, getting closer over the next few minutes until it was no more than a few hundred metres away. She could make out strange markings on the side of its unmanned gondola, complex sigils whose meaning was lost on her, but bore some resemblance to those decorating her cell.

It was more than enough. She grinned like a maniac as the blimp suddenly shifted back onto its original course, the rest of the train automatically shifting to follow it in its sudden, unintended course change.

Thank you, she sent to the skies, but it was already too late. Both the derelict and the Piri Reis had passed into Blackflower's dark side, and thus temporarily out of range.

'Dakota!'

The way Corso said her name this time, it sounded like a warning.

She stood and turned to face him once more, her heels only millimetres from the chasm of air filling the void between the Hive Towers. In her mind's eye, she imagined she looked like a diver about to make a leap from the high board.

'There's something you're not telling me,' she challenged him without preamble. 'I don't know what it is, but there's something. And we can't afford secrets, not here.'

He squinted at her in shock, his expression suddenly blank. She almost smiled. It was like confronting a kid with his hand still inside the cookie jar.

'Maybe you could tell me what you were doing there just now, Dakota. I was watching and… I saw what happened to that airship.' He licked his lips nervously. 'Did you make that happen?'