As she slumped to one side, suddenly Milligan was sitting on the arm of her chair, one hand resting on her thigh as he leaned in close to the side of her head. 'If there's one thing I want you to remember, Dakota, it's that this is not personal. Mr Quill really needs to find himself a better quality of thief than either Yi or her idiot brother. I'd say his game was slipping, so I'd say it was time we both found a new employer.'

'You drugged me.' She slumped further against Milligan's shoulder.

He patted her head. 'Yes, I did, my dear. It's time we were both moving on. You back to the Sol System, if you must, and me to somewhere my business can't be easily threatened.'

The rich, thick velvet of Milligan's bathrobe felt luxurious against her cheek, and she snuggled against it. 'I'll kill you, you miserable fucker,' she murmured, a drowsy half-smile on her face. 'I'll hunt you down and feed your pecker to your boyfriends.'

'I like you, my dear, contrary to all appearances. Nevertheless, I require you to draw attention away from me before the Bandati decide to turn up on my doorstep. And ours is a business where trust must frequently be sacrificed in the cause of survival.'

Milligan was gently stroking Dakota's hair now, but, deep in her drug-induced warm and snuggly mental cocoon, her thoughts were full of images of merciless vengeance. 'You know what?'

'Yes, my dear?'

'If you go anywhere near my ship, I'll make sure it buggers you to death, slices and dices what's left, and sells the remnants to one of those long-pig restaurants I hear Alexander Bourdain's running.'

'If you're anything, Dakota, you're certainly consistent. But, in the meantime, I'm really, really curious to see if this thing can do what it's supposed to.'

She heard him shifting beside her. 'Sebastian, have you finished programming the medbox? Oh, very good. Now, help me lift her up.'

'Milligan?' Dakota felt herself lifted from her chair. 'What're you going to do?'

'I'm going to see if this… device can really do what it purports to,' he told her. 'And if it can, well, I like to think you'll thank me one day…' 'And you escaped from this man Milligan?' the Queen of Darkening Skies asked Dakota as she finished.

She had slowly shifted herself to a sitting position as she spoke, though constantly aware of the weapons still aimed at her. 'Not exactly. I woke up in a medbox with scars up and down my back, and my implants told me maybe twenty-four hours had passed. There was no sign of Milligan, and he was gone for good from the orbital port. I knew straight away that he'd installed the filmsuit tech inside me. He obviously wanted to know if it really worked, or if it could be placed inside a human body. I'm guessing the medbox's analytical systems confirmed that it could. I still don't know how he got hold of it or if there was more than just the one filmsuit.'

Another Bandati, one of several others who had arrived while Dakota told her story, now turned to the Queen and spat out a rapid series of clicks and trills that went untranslated. The newcomers all wore long, coloured rags suspended from a fine mesh encasing their upper bodies. None of them, however, appeared to be carrying interpreters.

'This isn't a trial,' the Queen said, by way of reply to the Bandati who had addressed her. 'We won't, therefore, have another opportunity to gather evidence we can file away for later. But, yes, the Magi starship is of much greater importance.'

She turned her attention to the same Bandati who had snatched Dakota from the surface of Night's End. 'My dear Days of Wine and Roses,' she said, 'tell me, is the cease-fire holding?'

'Only just, my Queen. We've allowed Immortal Light's negotiators to believe our field generators are on the verge of failing. They'll stop short of launching a full-scale attack as long as they think we're trapped here.'

'You know,' Dakota said, staring around the chamber, 'There's no reason for me to even be here. I told you everything I can about the filmsuit. But I destroyed the derelict. Surely there's nothing for you to be fighting over any more?'

'Apart from what little knowledge still remains in your head?' Roses suggested. 'Perhaps we should dig that out the hard way'

'An unnecessary violation of corporeal matters,' boomed Trader. 'We have the other starship to consider.'

' "Other starship"?' Dakota echoed, genuinely puzzled.

Trader's manipulators writhed in malicious pleasure. 'Indeed, another Magi vessel intact, manifestly not destroyed, a mere smidgen of light-years removed from our present location, yet far from the beaten track of Shoal trade routes. A starship whose existence might yet have remained unknown, unrevealed, and hidden within these tideless depths of space – if not for the aid of the dear Queen who graces us with her presence.'

Dakota wondered when she was going to wake up, and also when that stony cold feeling in her gut was finally going to go away. 'Another Magi ship?'

'Whose deep and precious secrets we request your aid in hiding for ever from the voracious attentions of a species known as the Emissaries,' Trader continued. 'They, like us, have ships that swim the depths of the universe at speeds greater than the fleeting photon.'

'Rivals to the Shoal's hegemony,' Roses added. 'Certain restricted technologies, it appears, may in fact have originated from these Emissaries. The supposedly mythical Giantkillers, for instance, and the filmsuit technology as well.'

'How do you know all this?' Dakota shrilled at Roses.

'They know what they know by employing the standard protocols of inter-Hive diplomacy,' Trader answered on behalf of the Bandati. 'Espionage, murder and deceit, all flavoured with additional knowledge, courtesy of myself. The Emissaries most quietly seek to flood our client species with dangerous cache-technology, so that the authority of the Shoal might thereby be gradually undermined. It is most unfortunate, Dakota, that you and Corso shared your knowledge of the Magi with the Queen of Immortal Light. You are aware, of course, that this is the deadliest of knowledge – knowledge that can kill entire worlds.'

'I'm aware,' Dakota retorted, 'that you committed an act of genocide and stole the Magi's drive technology for yourselves. I'm aware that you've used me from the moment you set eyes on me. I'm aware you made me murder people I cared about, when you weren't just making me run around doing your dirty work for you. You raped me, you motherfucker! And now I've done your work for you by destroying the derelict, so frankly, I don't know just how far those tentacles of yours reach, but go fuck yourself!'

She stopped, pushing her hands down on the deck and steadying herself. This is not the time to lose control.

'Trader has a proposal,' Roses informed her, 'that would allow the Shoal to conveniently ignore our attempts to acquire cache-technology. His proposal contains a solution not only to your and our present predicaments, but to a conflict whose roots reach far back into the past of our own species.'

Don't trust Trader, Dakota wanted to say. Kill him, do anything you like, but don't trust him or any of the rest of the Shoal. But, at the same time, curiosity overwhelmed her, and she really wanted to hear just what it was Roses had to say.

She looked back up. 'Go on, then,' she urged quietly.

'Several millennia ago,' Roses explained, 'our Queen was closely allied with her sister the Queen of Immortal Light. Bandati Hives, by their nature, compete for resources – yet at that time the Fair Sisters were renowned for working together to an unprecedented degree.' In the centuries following first contact with the Shoal and gaining access to their coreships, the Bandati had soon learned the hard lesson that the cost of developing and then settling any one system was so enormous that their Hives had no choice but to band together if they were to effectively exploit that new system's resources.