The Emissary drones employed offensive technologies ranging from the most primitive directed-energy weapons all the way up to subquantal disruptors, intended to tear holes in the corvette's shaped fields and allow tiny, nuclear-tipped missiles to reach the relatively fragile hull within. At the same time, a constant barrage of supercharged plasma rained down on the corvette, a strategy that was rapidly depleting the batteries powering its shields.

There were hundreds of drones, too many for the corvette, which had been designed to operate as a lightly armed escort to larger, better-equipped ships. And yet, Trader could see, the engineers aboard the corvette were trying to divert spare power from the shield batteries in order to reach jump speed more quickly. They clearly knew what they were doing, but it was a dangerous game to play.

'What kept me,' Trader replied to his superior's query with more than a touch of acid, 'was your failure to inform me that I'd be shot at the instant I got here.'

Ah, yes,' Desire acknowledged. 'That is unfortunate. We caught up with this little fellow here' – as if in response, the Bandati screamed shrilly as another of his wings was fully severed from his body – 'and the next thing we know is we're stuck in the middle of a bloody ambush. But the commander assures me we'll be out of here in no time.'

'Presumably you brought me here to tell me how this Bandati managed to wander so far from his species' permitted territory' Trader wriggled his fins in a manner intended to imply a state of wide-eyed innocence bordering on imbecility. 'But do you think it's possible this ambush might be connected in some way?'

Under the wide curve of his belly, the General's manipulators twisted in an expression of nonchalance. 'We were merely unlucky. I'm sure I don't need to remind you we're still a long way from the zone of primary conflict.'

'You sent a secure transmission telling me you'd found something important,' Trader replied. 'Something that might change the outcome of the Long War?'

The General twisted his manipulators again, in the Shoal equivalent of a nod, before guiding Trader towards a more secluded corner of the chamber.

'Surely we don't need to hide from your own interrogators?' Trader protested.

'Forgive an old fish's habits, but I'd feel better if we spoke with at least the illusion of privacy' The General switched their comms mode over to a private one-to-one network, the timbre of his voice changing slightly as a result. 'We have a discovery of major importance here, my old friend. And it's not necessarily good news.'

A leaden weight sank to the very core of Trader's being, like a falling star plummeting to the depths of the Mother of Oceans. He knew immediately he wasn't going to like whatever the General had to tell him, because the old fool would never have dragged him all this way if Trader himself weren't already somehow deeply involved.

'Continue,' Trader replied at length.

'We have been tracking the movements of several Bandati scouts for some time now,' the General explained. 'They each separately boarded a coreship visiting a Bandati system known as Night's End, then exploited a flaw in our security protocols to smuggle themselves into areas of the galaxy not normally permitted to their species. Once we discovered the breach in security, we managed to keep track of our friend here through four different star systems and three different coreships before he briefly fell off our radar.'

Coreships were the means by which the Shoal ruled a substantial part of the galaxy, having jealously guarded the secret of faster-than-light travel for more than a quarter of a million years. They were planet-sized multi-environment starships, capable of carrying entire populations rapidly between different systems. The majority of species were rarely allowed to travel more than a few hundred light-years beyond their home systems, but with sufficient subterfuge, some might find the means to travel further.

'So a Bandati was sent to do a little illicit exploring, and slipped our attention,' Trader replied wearily. 'Is this all you have to show me?'

Desire ignored the implied reproach and gestured with one fin. In response, a solid-looking projection displaying a series of animated Shoal glyphs appeared in the air between their respective field-suspended spheres.

'It appears the Bandati Hive responsible for sending this spy somehow acquired the shell of a deceased Atn. Towards the end of his journey, he concealed himself within that shell, along with the cryogenic facilities to keep himself alive. Our best conjecture suggests the shell was subsequently ejected into interstellar space during one of the coreship's scheduled stops for navigation checking. Since this particular scheduled stop was within a hundred or so light-years of here, it was apparently no great matter for an Emissary scouting party to pick him up by prior arrangement, once the coreship had departed.' The chamber shook once more, indicating that something had managed to slip past the corvette's defences. Trader checked with his yacht's battle systems and saw that something metallic and worm-like was digging its way through the corvette's hull. The machine began to melt and shatter as secondary defensive beam weapons targeted it with precision fire.

At least the corvette was almost ready to make the jump back into superluminal space, and safety.

Trader brought his attention back to the interrogation chamber. He glanced over to see the Bandati spy still struggling wildly as yet another of his wings was messily severed from his body. Small globules of blood spun in the zero gravity, wreathed with dark, oily smoke from the effects of the blowtorch.

The Bandati abruptly ceased his agonized struggles and slumped forward, having almost certainly died of his injuries. All this effort for one insignificant creature, Trader thought. He felt a curious and unpleasant tightening of the skin across the back of his tail, an instinctive reflex born of fear.

'An Emissary scouting party,' Trader repeated. That the Bandati should even have become aware of the Emissaries' existence was in itself a revelation to Trader. 'This makes no sense, General. Why would the Emissaries agree to such a thing? There's nothing the Bandati could possibly have to offer them.'

'Or perhaps, my dear Trader, they do have something to offer. A Bandati Hive known as "Immortal Light" controls Night's End, and we know for an absolute fact that this Hive has been communicating with the Emissaries via encrypted tach-net transmissions. By the time we managed to break their encryption, their spies were already long gone on their way. This one' – Desire swivelled within his briny sphere, and glanced at the still pinned but slumped body of the spy – 'was returning from his liaison with the Emissaries when we apprehended him.'

Desire next indicated a secondary projection, which contained a schematic of a superluminal drone adapted to carry a single passenger. Apparently it was designed to self-destruct once it had returned the Bandati spy to the nearest coreship-linked system, but the corvette had intercepted the drone when it had dropped back into subluminal space for a navigation check.

Since the Shoal jealously guarded the only means of travelling faster than light, any other civilization they encountered desiring to travel between the stars could do so only aboard the Shoal's own coreships. As far as the vast majority of such client races were concerned, the Shoal were the only species to have yet developed superluminal technology, anywhere within the galaxy.

That was, of course, a lie.

The Emissaries were the Shoal's one real rival for dominance of the Milky Way. Unlike the Shoal, they had acquired their FTL technology directly from a Maker cache, and had used it to gain control of a substantial section of one spiral arm.