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nodded towards the guards. Two of them forced Atticus’s traitor arms behind his back.
    ‘I was trying to help my family!’
    ‘You’ve had the means to help them for some time,’ Vladric growled. ‘Since you can’t, I will.’
    ‘Then I’ll raid the convoy!’ Atticus protested. I’ll do what you—’
    ‘A Ceti captain follows orders without question,’ Vladric said. ‘He finds a way to honour his duty to family and our brotherhood.’
    ‘Please, I beg your forgiveness—’
    Vladric’s face turned from indifference to anger.
    ‘Governor Lareck!’ he snarled. ‘Get this traitor out of my sight before I kill him myself. Seize his funds and property. The ship is ours, the rest belongs to his children.’
    Sig glared at Atticus, who was now sobbing.
    ‘Guards,’ Sig said quietly.
    It was best never to look back. Bystanders, even the few who might have been searching for the courage to intervene, all returned to their business as the guards dragged Atticus back towards the tram platform.
    Sig knew that word of his sentence would spread quickly.
    ‘“Ready for anything”, eh?’ Vladric sneered, marching towards the lab. ‘Not with cowards like that in our ranks. Root them out
now
, Sig
.
It’ll make all the difference in this fight.’
    Dr Ilya Tallendin, the chief researcher in Ceti’s weapons division, emerged from the main entrance to the complex.
    ‘Welcome, Commander,’ he said, giving the salute. ‘You’re just in time.’
    ‘That implies good news,’ Vladric said.
    ‘Oh, it is,’ Ilya replied, leading them inside. ‘Right this way, please.’
    The weapons lab hall was an enormous cavern burrowed deep beneath the magma chamber itself. Dr Tallendin led them to an observation deck that ringed the highest elevations within; the bottom was nearly two hundred metres down and sectioned into staging areas crowded with heavy machinery. The scientists working inside wore survival suits, as the environment mimicked a pristine vacuum, with temperatures well below freezing.
    On one side of the cavern floor, Sig recognised the menacing contours of a frigate’s railgun; its turret was securely bolted into the rock. Opposite, just fifty metres away, was a segment of ship armour.
    Dr Tallendin cleared his throat.
    ‘For this test, we’re using an authentic Navy MK50 railgun, and firing it from point-blank range into the same plating used on most Ceti corvettes. The MK50 fires a slug at speeds in excess of eight kilometres per second, presenting a kinetic energy challenge, or more specifically the amount of force transferred at the point of impact, which is the output of mass times velocity—’
    ‘Move along,’ Sig interrupted.
    ‘Right. Quantum particles attain their mass through interactions with the Higgs field, “absorbing” mass via the Higgs boson. We sought to block that interaction, by either preventing the absorption itself, or by cancelling the field oscillations. As it turns out, there was a third way to—’
    ‘Ilya …’ Sig warned.
    ‘We can reduce the mass of any projectiles that travel through our shield barrier by at least ninety-five per cent,’ the doctor said.
    Sig felt his jaw drop.
    ‘Ninety-five?’ he repeated.
    ‘That’s correct,’ the doctor said, looking towards the cavern floor. The scientists working within had exited, and yellow warning lights were ablaze in the test area. ‘We may be able to increase that somewhat, but not much further—’
    ‘Show me,’ Vladric demanded.
    ‘As you wish,’ the doctor said.
    After a few moments, Sig thought the lab had exploded. A fireball erupted from the railgun which engulfed the target, and from that range the armour plate should have been obliterated. Instead, a sizable dent crowned the crosshairs painted onto it, and the slug itself had broken into countless white-hot fragments.
    ‘How…?’ Sig asked, incredulous. Vladric remained motionless throughout, his face impassive.
    ‘The round which struck the